


A Reel for the Watcher

by RedCytosine



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Hopeful Ending, Kelpie!Jon, M/M, No beta we die like archival assistants, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 70,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25120264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedCytosine/pseuds/RedCytosine
Summary: Martin Blackwood, in need of employment and out of options, takes a clerical position in Scotland at Castle Magnus, working for the enigmatic Lord Elias Bouchard. He expects it to be glorified paper-shuffling, but what he finds instead is much more sinister. What secrets lurk in the castle library? Who plays the wild music that haunts his dreams? And why does a strange horse wander the lakeshore each morning at dawn?AKA a fantasy AU with faeries!~~ Part One now complete! ~~
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 272
Kudos: 263





	1. Uncertain Country

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be a three part story with each part consisting of several chapters. Part One is titled The Water Horse.
> 
> CW for this chapter: ableist language

_I watch with envious eyes and mind,_

_the single-souled, who dare not feel_

_The wind that blows beyond the moon,_

_who do not hear the Faery Reel._

_If you don’t hear the Faery Reel,_

_they will not pause to steal your breath._

_When I was young I was a fool._

_So wrap me up in dreams and death._

-Neil Gaiman, “The Faery Reel”

  
  


The coach clattered to a stop and jolted Martin out of sleep. He blinked his eyes open. For a moment, he thought himself back in his narrow bed in a dark London room and struggled to orient himself to the light and air of a country morning.

“Young man,” sniffed his fellow passenger, “we’ve arrived.” She was an older woman, perhaps in her sixties, dressed primly and wearing a severe expression. “I require you to move out of the way.”

Martin stammered out an apology and hurried to shift himself on the narrow coach bench. He hastily gathered up his small suitcase and reached for the latch to open the door. The old, rusted mechanism rattled in his hand as he tried to turn it. He could practically feel the scowling woman’s eyes on the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he said again. “Just a moment.”

The driver took pity on him, alighting from his seat at the front with practiced grace. One yank of his hand and the door opened, and Martin came scrambling out and down the step. His first foot to touch ground splashed into a puddle of fresh rainwater. He wanted, just a bit, to swear. He’d managed to ruin his only decent pair of shoes. 

He didn’t allow himself much time to mourn. He still felt a little dizzy from sudden wakefulness, and he had to blink several more times before his eyes adjusted to the brightness. He was standing by the side of the street and facing a small country post office. It was neatly painted in white and a sign by the door read “Hilltop Village.”

Martin had always heard the weather in Scotland was atrocious, but on this particular morning, it couldn’t have been more beautiful. Only a few scattered clouds chased across the sky. The air was the perfect balance of warmth with a gentle breeze. It must have rained recently, judging by the puddles in the street and the slickness of the thick grasses growing by the roadside, but now, the wind carried only a delicious after-rain smell of fresh earth and growing things. Martin, used to the choking smogs of London, had been marveling at the sensation of breathing clean air over the last several days of travel through the countryside, but in this place, the air was almost sweet, like you could get tipsy if you breathed deep enough.

“Mr. Blackwood?”

“Oh!” Martin, slightly startled, came back to himself. A woman had emerged from the post office and was now stood in front of him. She was dressed in what looked like some kind of household livery crossed with a military uniform and done up in black and silver, complete with matching embroidery on the border of her headscarf. It looked like practical, well-made clothing. An insignia on her chest showed the stylized image of an eye. 

“Mr. Martin Blackwood?” she asked again.

“Yes!” said Martin. Hurriedly he reached out his hand. “I’m Martin Blackwood, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Basira Hussain, Co-Captain of Lord Bouchard’s household guard. I’ve been asked to bring you to the castle. Follow me. I’ve got transport waiting.” 

She led Martin between buildings and around the back of the post office, where a chaise was waiting. Without a word, she climbed into the driver’s box. Martin, trailing along in her wake, sat down in the small passenger’s seat with his suitcase beside him.

“Have you got everything you need?” asked Basira.

“Um, yes.”

“Good.” She flicked the reins at the pony drawing the cart and they began to trot down the narrow road.

Hilltop Village was not what Martin had pictured when he’d set out by post from London. Yes, in some ways it conjured up the quintessential Scottish village he’d seen in a hundred paintings. It was mostly low wood and stone buildings clustered closely together. The center of town, such as it was, couldn’t contain more than a few dozen buildings all told, including a few shops and a church on the high street. Very quickly, the town petered out in all directions and yielded to windblown grass and flocks of sheep and cows. It wasn’t more than a minute or two of trotting before they were surrounded by low stone fences and pastures on both sides of the road. 

All that was what Martin had expected. But given the actual name of the village, he’d been imagining a hamlet on a bluff or a dale or at some kind of elevation, at least. Hilltop Village, though, was settled in the middle of a valley. Rolling green hills rose up on three sides. Basira was driving the chaise towards the only opening to the valley that Martin could see. 

Gathering himself, he said, “Why’s it called Hilltop Village if it’s in a valley?”

“It’s some local’s idea of a joke, I expect,” said Basira without turning around.

“How far away is the castle?”

“We have a good forty minutes’ drive ahead of us.” 

Martin did not want to sit the entire trip in silence. He had to try to get her talking. 

“How long have you worked for Lord Bouchard?”

“Just a few years.”

“And you’re the Captain of the Guard?”

“Co-Captain, yes.”

“Is there trouble round here? Why does Lord Bouchard need so many guards?” Martin tried to pass it off as a half-joke, but he was genuinely curious. The days of Scottish rebellions and North Sea raiders were long gone. Judging by the news in London, there weren’t even that many highwaymen up here, if only because the pickings were so slim and the land so depopulated. 

“A bit of trouble, yes.”

“Robbers on the road?”

“You could say so. We’ve had encounters with some really nasty characters. And Lord Bouchard isn’t the type to leave much to chance.” 

At least he’d managed to get more than a single sentence out of her. He decided to count that as a win. He gave it a few more attempts, asking about her family and where she was from, and although none of her answers were rude, they were succinct and clipped. She asked no questions of him in return. At last he surrendered to the silence.

Before long, the road turned and the last little hills fell away and a great expanse of blue-gray shimmered into view. The sun glanced off the water and dazzled Martin’s eyes when he first saw it. The shore of the loch swept around in a long arc, and on the distant far side, he made out more hills and a dense forest sloping down to touch the waters. Between the coach and the woods, set on a bluff above the ragged shore, was the castle itself.

He’d imagined a fairy-tale castle of shining pale stone, complete with proud towers and battlements (whatever those were, he’d never been one for architecture), but like Hilltop Village, Castle Magnus, the seat of Lord Elias Bouchard, defied his expectations. The stone was weathered and dark with age and several towers appeared to be quite literally crumbling. The walls were still high, but they only managed to look gloomy, despite the clear skies and bright sunshine. And the whole place seemed smaller, somehow, than he would have expected.

“Is that… is that it?” he found himself asking.

“Yes,” said Basira. 

“Oh.” At least he couldn’t complain about the surroundings. Even though he’d never been an outdoorsman, he had to admit that the caste must command spectacular views of the loch and forest and hills. When the weather was clear, that was.

As they clattered closer to the castle, the landscape around the road began to change. Nearer to Hilltop Village, practically every yard of open land had been enclosed by the mortarless stone fences that the locals seemed so fond of building. Slowly, slowly, the fences petered out on the approach to the castle, until there was little to bound the edges of the windblown grasses. He’d have thought that Lord Bouchard would have kept some cattle or sheep, but he saw none. Nothing, indeed, indicated any human habitation at all besides the road and the castle itself, and the road’s condition was getting steadily worse as they went. It had started as a fairly well-maintained road, not paved but clearly kept-up, free from large potholes or deep ruts. But now the grassy median between the wagon ruts grew wider and wider, spreading outward with grasping tufts, until the cart rode upon a greenway. 

At first, Martin thought there must be some mistake. A joke, or maybe a prank? Was this all an elaborate scheme to further humiliate him? No castle could be inhabited and yet have the only approaching road be covered by grass. Hooves and wagon wheels would tear it to pieces within a week. Panic gripped his stomach for a moment; what would he do now? He didn’t have the money to pay post back to London. And even if he got there, he could never afford the rent on what had once been his apartment. And he couldn’t go back to his mother. That was not an option. 

He forced himself to breathe as the cart drew up the slope towards the castle. He could still see some semblance of a road; the grass under the wagon wheels was shorter, but it didn’t look as though it had been cut, merely as though it had decided to grow to a lesser height. He stared up at the approaching walls of the castle. Now that he was closer, he could see the moss and lichens staining the castle walls a vague greenish-gray. No one appeared on the battlements. No guards, no outbuildings, no animal grazing, no signs of life. The fear clenched at him even tighter and he was just working up the courage to ask Basira just what exactly was going on when he noticed the gates.

They were built of wood and what looked like an unusual amount of metal. They were impeccably maintained -- he’d go so far as to wonder if they didn’t actually polish and oil the metal -- and stood open in the entrance to the castle. The place couldn’t possibly be abandoned, not with gates like that. They’d have crumbled and rusted away to nothing. He dared to let out half a breath as Basira approached and drove the pony through.

Inside the doors was much more of what Martin had been expecting. The castle walls encircled a fair-sized courtyard with wooden outbuildings on the edges, including a large smithy and small stable. A few people, most likely staff, moved through, looking purposeful. As they passed the gates, the greenway turned abruptly to mud. No grasses grew in the castle courtyard. 

Even if there were fewer people than he would have guessed, Martin was inexpressibly relieved. This wasn’t a joke. Castle Magnus was inhabited. 

Basira drove the chaise up near the entrance to the stable and halted the pony. She turned to look at Martin. “Welcome to Castle Magnus. I’ll introduce you to your new colleagues and they can help get you settled. After that, I’m afraid I have other things to attend to.”

“Of course,” said Martin, grateful to have some obvious path forward. Meet his colleagues, get situated. Settle in. He could do that. Yes. He put on a smile, grabbed his back, and climbed out of the chaise. He did his best to ignore the drying-out mud of the courtyard that sucked at his only pair of shoes. He’d just have to make the best of things. 

Basira led him over to a small door set into a tall stone building. “This is the north wing. Library’s in here. So is Lord Bouchard’s study. I expect he’ll want to meet you soon; he does like to keep an eye on his staff and there will be paperwork to sign.” She guided him through a series of austere and somewhat dimly-lit corridors, with little in the way of furnishing. Martin was quickly lost. The castle had looked quite small from the outside, but now it seemed a fair labyrinth of stone and stairs descending down. 

At the bottom of a spiral staircase, Basira halted suddenly. Martin had to grab at the rough stone wall to avoid tripping over his own feet and falling onto her. 

“Sasha! I’ve brought your new colleague.”

Martin peered over her shoulder. Near the landing stood a tall woman with long hair and glasses. She was carrying a heavy-looking stack of files and had turned round to look at Martin and Basira on the stair. Basira stepped aside to allow Martin to edge past her and into the corridor at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hello, nice to meet you, I’m Martin Blackwood,” he began.

“Sasha James. Pleasure to meet you.” She smiled a genuinely welcoming smile. “Glad you’ve made it all right.”

“Bit of a trip up from London, but it wasn’t so bad,” Martin replied. 

“I’ve got to head off. Business with Daisy,” said Basira. “See you both later.”

“Thank you!” Martin called after her as she turned and headed back up the spiral staircase. 

“All right then,” said Sasha. “Why don’t I show you to your room? You can get settled and freshened up, and when you’re ready, come find me. We’ll get you started.”

She guided him down the corridor and showed him into another passage. This appeared to be the sleeping quarters for the assistant librarians. Sasha opened one of the doors and Martin saw a small, windowless, but clean-looking room with a bed, wardrobe, wash basin, and small iron-bound chest. 

“Afraid it’s not much, but let us know if we can do anything to make you more comfortable,” Sasha said. Martin, who had been used to sleeping in far worse places than this, stammered his gratitude. 

Sasha gave him directions to her office and left him to unpack. There wasn’t much to be done. He took his time regardless, unfolding the few shirts and trousers and folding them carefully away. A key sat in the lock of the iron chest, and he opened it up and put in his wallet -- not that there was anything much to steal from it. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and allowed himself to breathe.

He’d made it. Of course there were more hurdles ahead, but he was hopeful he could get past them. It couldn’t be that hard to be a librarian. From the job description, it just sounded like Lord Bouchard wanted some glorified filing clerks. He could figure that out, no problem. And Sasha at least seemed friendly enough.

He changed his shirt and squared up his shoulders. Sliding his empty suitcase under the bed, he left to go find Sasha. 

Martin had never had the best head for directions and this castle really was like a maze, so he took a few wrong turns before he finally ended up outside Sasha’s office. The nameplate on the door read “Head Librarian.” The door stood slightly ajar, but he thought about knocking anyway, before Sasha herself opened it the rest of the way.

“All ready? Excellent. First things first, I’ve been asked to take you up to Lord Bouchard’s study. It shouldn’t take long.” She dropped her voice and added, “He’s a bit distant, but so far he’s not been so bad.”

As he followed Sasha back up the spiral staircase, Martin asked, “How long have you been working here?”

“About a month,” she said. “I used to work in Cambridge, if you can believe it. But I wanted to get out of the city, and I’ve always had an interest in the history of British folk tales. There aren’t many better places than this for those kinds of studies.”

So at least Sasha was obviously competent, if she’d worked in Cambridge. She too had traded the bustle of a university town for the isolation of this castle. “Do you get out into town much?”

“Not so often. It’s a bit of a long ride and an even longer walk. We get supplies in every week and you can order by mail catalogue for anything you need.”

“Oh.” It sounded more than a little lonely.

“It’s not so bad,” said Sasha, seeming to follow his train of thought. “Most of the people here are all right. But we were definitely looking forward to your coming here, Martin. It’s nice to have a new face around.”

Sasha led him up several floors of spiraling stairs. They encountered no one as they climbed and by the time they reached the upper floors, Martin’s legs were starting to complain. Finally, on the top floor of the staircase, Sasha turned into a short corridor. It was dark and plain as all the others he’d seen, except for a single set of ornate double doors made of oak chased with heavy black wrought iron. From their size and intricacy, Martin guessed they must be the doors to Lord Bouchard’s study. The iron had been twisted and woven into knots and spirals and strange patterns that he struggled to follow, but he saw that many of them formed stylized eyes. 

Sasha gave him a quick encouraging smile and knocked on the nearest door. A smooth, soft voice spoke from inside: “Come in.” Sasha pulled the door open. 

The first thing Martin noticed was the light. It dazzled his eyes, which had grown used to the dim candlelight of the lower passages. The far wall of the room was nearly all windows, diamond-shaped panes letting in the vivid sunlight. The two side walls were covered in bookcases. A huge carved desk sat in the center of the room, back to the windows, and at the desk sat a tall, thin man. He looked up from writing with a quill pen in a heavy-looking ledger. 

“Ah, Mr. Blackwood. I trust you had a safe journey? I am Elias Bouchard.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Please, Mr. Blackwood, no need for excessive ceremony. ‘Sir’ will do just fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Has Ms. James shown you around yet?”

“I was told you wanted him brought straight to you,” Sasha said.

“Well, I won’t keep you too long. First things first.” He opened a drawer in the desk and drew out a sheaf of papers. “Come here, Mr. Blackwood.”

Martin approached the desk with a little trepidation. He’d never been this close to a member of the nobility and all the stories said you never could tell with one of them. Some were decent but many were cruel and capricious. Lord Bouchard regarded him with a benign expression. 

“This is a contract of employment. All very standard. Feel free to read it over if you wish, but I will require a signature before proceeding.”

Martin was just as happy to get it over with. The sooner he secured his employment here, the sooner he could relax, at least a bit. He barely skimmed the document in its first few pages and essentially gave up by the last, merely accepting Lord Bouchard’s offered quill and signing his name on the line on the final page. Lord Bouchard tucked away the document with obvious satisfaction.

“Splendid. Very well, Mr. Blackwood, welcome to Castle Magnus. Ms. James will give you a more specific description of your duties, but I’ll give you a general sense of things. I and my family have always been interested in stories of the esoteric and supernatural. We gather accounts of mysterious happenings, particularly from the local area. I have an extensive collection of texts on mythology. 

“Unfortunately, this collection has fallen into disorganization. A previous caretaker of the collection was less than zealous in maintaining things in proper order, and rectifying this situation will be the principal goal of your position. Ms. James will be supervising, of course.

“I do have a few other requirements for you to bear in mind. Should you wish to go to the village, you must be accompanied by one of my castle guard. Talk to Basira Hussain -- she picked you up in town, correct? -- and she can help you make arrangements. This is for your own safety.

“Likewise, the castle doors are locked at sunset and open at dawn. None of my staff are allowed out between those hours. Should you find yourself locked out of the castle after hours, do not expect to be let back in before dawn. This, again, is a safety measure. We live in uncertain country and must take precautions.”

 _Uncertain country?_ wondered Martin. What could that possibly mean? But he was hesitant to ask too many questions of his new employer, so he merely nodded his head.

“Questions?”

“No, sir.”

“All right, then. Ms. James, why don’t you show Mr. Blackwood around?”

“Of course, sir,” said Sasha.

“Good day to both of you.” He reached for his quill to continue his work. Sasha closed the door behind them. 

“All right, you’re all official!” she said. “Would you like a tour of the sights?”

“Please,” Martin replied. 

Sasha took him around the castle. She showed him the kitchens and the laundry rooms, the great hall. The latter looked as though it hadn’t been used in a long time: there were dusty drapes over the tables and chairs and even the small, high windows were shuttered. Martin still found the layout of the castle very odd. Corridors seemed to wander in unexpected directions, branch off suddenly, and come to abrupt ends. Sasha assured him he’d get the hang of it soon enough. 

She brought him down to one of the few well-lit hallways. “You must be starving from your trip. This is the small dining room, where the staff eat.” She showed him in through a door that spilled light into the corridor.

Inside was a small but friendly-looking room with windows open to the rolling grassy plains. On one side were a mess of tables and chairs; on another, platters and bowls of food had been set on a table. A few staff members Martin suddenly realized just how hungry he actually was. 

“Hey, Sasha!” A man sat at one of the tables near the window and waved at them. “Is that our new friend?”

“Hello, Tim,” she said. To Martin she added, “Come get some food and join us when you’re ready.”

Martin helped himself to a bowl of potato and leek soup and a thick slice of buttered toast and joined them by the window. Tim was giving him a bright smile.

“So you’re Martin Blackwood, eh? Come to join us in the ninth circle of hell?”

Sasha playfully nudged him. “Don’t go scaring the poor man, Tim; he’s only just come from talking to Lord Bouchard.”

“Sorry,” said Tim. “You must have had enough fright for one day, then.” He offered his hand across the table. “Tim Stoker, your friendly fellow assistant librarian.”

“Martin.”

“Well, Martin, how does it feel to be up in the back end of nowhere?”

“Great, actually.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“London.”

“My god, this place must seem dull to you. It seems dull to me and I only came here from Bath.”

“No, I rather like it, actually.” He found himself saying it even though he wasn’t quite sure if he did like it or not, but he was sure he didn’t miss London. 

“Hmm. We’ll see if you’re still saying that when the rain sets in.” Tim attacked his own slice of buttered toast. 

Martin felt a grin trying to creep onto his face. He thought maybe that he liked these people. He was still afraid they’d find out the truth about him, but he’d passed the first few tests. He had an employment contract, a room, a hot meal, and though the lord of the castle was maybe a bit odd, at least his colleagues seemed all right. It was a place to start.

After lunch, Sasha and Tim showed him back down into the lowest level of the castle. The library, oddly, was located entirely underground. Most libraries Martin had ever seen were built to take advantage of natural light, but the cavernous room they showed him was lit entirely by candlelight. Candelabras made of iron and glass stood at intervals along each wall and bookshelf and a large supply of glass-enclosed lanterns sat by the door.

“Just be careful with the candles,” said Sasha.

“Yeah, this place is a firetrap,” Tim added.

The enormous room was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Each one was completely stuffed with books, papers, and scrolls. As he wandered through the stacks, lantern in hand, Martin couldn’t make out any organizational system at all. Stacks of loose papers had been thrust into the pages of books or fallen to the floor. Some books lay in piles in the corner with no apparent regard for subject or author. There must be tens of thousands of documents here, and nearly every one was out of order. Martin began to grasp the magnitude of the job at hand.

He skimmed over the titles that he could. Many were in other languages: French, German, Italian, Arabic, dozens of others he couldn’t recognize. Those that were in English had titles like _The Hand of the Sky, The Changeling,_ and _The Tale of the Piper_. 

“It’s a godawful mess,” said Tim casually.

“We’ve been discussing some organizational schemes,” Sasha told him, “but it’s been hard to make a start without a more complete catalogue of what’s even in here. If you have any suggestions, Martin, we’d be happy to hear them. Otherwise, it’ll be a lot of just going through shelves and sorting them out.”

“How did this place get in such a mess?” asked Martin. 

“Bouchard says the last librarian went crazy, deliberately messed things up,” Tim said. “But nobody seems to know. She burned the catalogue and indexing system and then just threw things about, and now nobody can find anything.”

“Um, all right.” Martin took a steadying breath. “Where do I get started?”

Tim insisted on bringing Martin out to the wall after dinner to watch the sun set over the western hills. Martin, for his part, was more than happy to follow. He hadn’t seen a clear sunset through the smoke of London for years.

“Now what’s really nice,” said Tim, “is sunrise. It rises over the loch and it’s gorgeous. I value my sleep a bit more these days, but you should come out here some morning to see it. Especially since we spend the rest of the day down in the Pit.” ‘The Pit’ was Tim’s phrase to describe the underground library, and Martin had even caught Sasha using it once or twice yesterday. 

As the last rays dipped below the hills and painted the clear sky in orange and purple and pink, a groaning sound rose up from the courtyard below. Martin turned and looked down to see Basira and two other guards closing the heavy gates. They shut with a heavy sound, a sound with a strange air of finality to it. The guards lowered a cross bar into place to brace the doors closed.

Tim followed Martin’s gaze down to the guards. “Oh, Daisy’s back.”

“Who’s Daisy?”

Tim gestured to a tall, powerfully-built woman standing next to Basira. “Co-Captain of the guard with Basira. You don’t see her around much; she’s usually off running errands or something for Bouchard.”

“What kind of errands?”

“No idea.” 

Daisy’s head snapped up to stare at them as though she’d heard them. She gave Tim and Martin a glare that almost felt like a physical blow. Without a word, she turned and walked back into a door at the base of one of the wall towers, Basira at her side. 

“She’s kind of intense,” Tim said. “Come on then, let’s get dinner.”

That night, Martin dreamt of music.

Strange, wild, skirling music filled the hills and spilled down into the castle. There were fiddles and drums and flutes in the orchestra, he could tell, but many of the instruments he couldn’t name. They sounded like the blowing wind through grass, or the waves on the shore, or the falling of leaves in autumn, or falling snow. The tune picked him up and made him want to dance, and he spun through the halls of the castle as if he’d known them all his life, and he laughed and clapped his hands. The music moved through him and for the first time since he was a child, he was unafraid and carefree and didn’t care who might be watching. He danced into the courtyard through the light of the moon and more stars than he’d ever seen in his life, and the air was sweet and sharp as wine. His hand came to rest on the cross bar that locked the doors, and he laughed again. In a moment he’d have it open --

\--Martin awoke in his small bed in a stone room in the basement of the castle.

For a moment he struggled to get his bearings, forgetting the long journey up from London. It was nearly pitch-black in the room, with the only light creeping in a thin crack under the door. Soon enough he remembered where he was. 

He wasn’t going to get any more sleep, that much was for sure. He lit a candle on his bedside table and dressed. He’d go out and try to figure out what time it was.

Martin was aiming to head for the courtyard, or at least a window so he could see whether daylight was approaching. He didn’t see any other members of staff about, so he had no one to ask for directions, but he surprised himself by finding the door to the courtyard almost at once. When he stepped outside, he was greeted by a pale light and the sight of Basira and Daisy raising the cross bar on the gate. It was dawn. 

Work wouldn’t officially start nor breakfast be on the table for another hour or so. An impulse caught him. He crossed the courtyard, gave a wave to Daisy and Basira -- the latter returning it, the former ignoring him -- and walked out the now-open gates onto the greenway. The air was nearly as sweet as it had been in his dream, and when he turned to look at the loch, he saw that Tim had been right. The sunrise _was_ spectacular. It lit the calm waves and turned them into panes of gold and red flame.

Martin spotted a deer trail leading off the road and towards the shore. He followed it. It had been a long time since he’d been close to a big, wild lake like this, and it seemed that exercise in nature was one of the only sources of entertainment around, so he might as well get started. His muddy shoes soon became soaked with dew as he zig-zagged down the bluff and to the stony shore.

The waves of the loch were quiet this morning. Not so much as a fish broke the surface. Martin perched on a convenient boulder to watch as the sun broke over the waters. It looked to be another perfectly clear day. In the faint chill of the morning, listening to the shorebirds cry, he thought it was not so bad after all to be here, in this remote corner of Scotland.

Stones clattered down the beach.

It was a small sound, but in the early quiet it made Martin jump and snap around wildly. Not ten yards away, a horse was standing on the shore. It was dark-coated and small, not that much taller than a pony, and its long mane blew across its eyes. Wavelets lapped at its rear hooves that still stood in the surf. It stood still, ears pricked and staring at Martin, seeming just as surprised to see him as he was to see it.

How odd. He hadn’t seen a horse from the bluff. Nothing like that should have been able to hide from him down here, and yet… He found himself standing. He took a step forward towards the horse. He raised his hands. One seashell-curved ear flicked and dark nostrils flared. 

“Hello there,” he heard himself saying. He took another step. “I won’t hurt you.”

The horse tossed its head and shifted its weight but remained standing there. Now that he was closer he could see that although it was dark-coated, it wasn’t actually black, just a very dark gray. You could see the dapples coming in. A phantom wind tossed the long forelock away from the eyes and he saw a gray patch, shaped like a jagged star, on its forehead. Its coat was still damp as though it had been swimming in the loch. Martin raised a hand --

The horse spun around, rearing up, hooves flashing, snorting, and then, faster than blinking, it turned and bolted away. It galloped down the beach and threw a few kicks back towards Martin, who lowered his hands in confusion. What was that? Why was he trying to touch a wild horse? He’d been lucky not to be bitten or kicked. 

The horse was incredibly quick, too. He’d been to the races once and even he was fairly certain that this feral Scottish creature could have shown its heels to any of the sleek Thoroughbreds with their deep-pocketed owners. It reached the woods far around the curve of the beach and then turned again and charged into the loch. Huge waves of water sprung up behind it like wings, and then with a sudden leap, it threw itself beneath the surface. Or seemed to, at any rate. He was so far away that he couldn’t see its head, which must be just above the surface of the water. 

Martin blinked and waited for the horse to reappear, but it didn’t, not even after several minutes. He tried to remember if he’d ever read anything about amphibious equine species native to Scotland, but he couldn’t recall. 

“Martin!”

He turned. Basira was stood on the bluff behind him.

“It’s nearly breakfast. Best to come inside now.”

Martin nodded. He’d had enough beauty and strangeness to start the morning. As the sun lifted above the surface of the loch, he followed Basira back to the castle. From the height of the bluff he turned back once to look for the horse, but he saw nothing, not even a ripple, to mark where it had leapt into the dark water below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back on my AU bullshit and no one can stop me. This is gonna be a long one folks so welcome to the journey!
> 
> As always, apologies for any Americanisms and anachronisms! And also as always, comments give me LIFE and motivation and additionally every single one makes me grin in a frankly ludicrous manner.


	2. Of the Waters and the Wild

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Reel for the Watcher, Part One: The Water Horse, continued.
> 
> There is an approximately 0% chance I'll be able to consistently update this quickly, but y'all were so lovely and kind with your comments and kudos on the first chapter that I went ahead and finished this earlier than I expected.

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Neither Tim nor Sasha were there, so Martin ate his eggs and sausages by himself. A few other members of staff were eating at the same time, but none introduced themselves beyond a nod or seemed overly eager to share his company. He finished quickly and went in search of the library.

He only took one or two wrong turns before he made it down into the great candlelit space. Sasha was already there, sat on the floor, surrounded by towers of books and leaning over what looked to be an English-Norwegian dictionary. She gave him a wave as he entered and lit one of the lanterns by the door. 

“Martin, would you mind lighting the candles over in the north stacks? After that, pull out anything that looks like Norwegian. I’m having a go at sorting through them this morning and figuring out what we have.”

“Do you speak Norwegian?”

“No,” she sighed. “I don’t know why Lord Bouchard won’t hire more linguists. There must be books in four dozen languages here that we’re meant to be cataloging and organizing. I only speak English, French, and Turkish, and that doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Martin, who only spoke English and a smattering of Polish, made a sympathetic noise and beat a hasty retreat. He certainly didn’t want to get caught up in conversations about qualifications and hiring policies. He did his best to focus instead on the comforting scents of aged paper and the feeling of old cloth and leather bindings. 

He only found one or two Norwegian books on the shelf. He did find a whole collection of papers in a script that he couldn’t identify, which Sasha thought might be Sanskrit. When Tim arrived, he took the opposite shelf and started off on small talk. Most of it was his theories on what could have possessed an influential aristocratic family to collect particular volumes he came across.

“What is this?” Tim asked derisively, holding up a thin volume. Martin turned round to read the title: _The Willoughby Children and the Dewdrop Fairies._ The cover featured a group of children surrounded by butterfly-winged sprites. “Children’s stories? This is supposed to have academic value?”

“People study all sorts of stuff, I guess,” said Martin.

“Well I suppose he’s got enough money that he can be as eccentric as he likes,” said Tim, and tossed the book on a growing pile of similar books. 

“Hey, make sure you keep an account of those,” Sasha said, looking up from her Norwegian dictionary. “We’ve got to have a decent catalogue.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them all sorted,” said Tim. He continued tossing books into piles on the floor.

Martin turned back to his own shelves. Another maybe-Sanskrit volume, something called _Trolls,_ even a battered old folio of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream._ It seemed that Lord Bouchard had eclectic and wide-ranging tastes in his literature. They were all jumbled together; it must have taken decades of neglect to transform the library from well-organized to such a thorough mess. The last librarian must have taken negligence to a really epic extreme. 

The next book on Martin’s shelf was a slim volume entitled _Of the Waters and the Wild._ Martin was just about to place it with the other miscellaneous English volumes for later investigation when an image stamped in black on the leather binding caught his attention. It was a horse, ears pricked, posed as though staring at whomever had taken its likeness. 

The title combined with the picture was enough to pique Martin’s curiosity. He opened to the title page, careful not to rip the fragile old paper. The full title was, apparently, _Of the Waters and the Wild: A Fantastical Bestiary of Scotland._ No author or publisher was listed. 

Martin searched for an index or table of contents, but found none. He resorted to flipping through the pages. The book appeared to be divided into a series of short illustrated descriptions of odd creatures that the author claimed to have met on their travels in Scotland. All were impossible; the author must be writing short fiction, Martin thought. But some were quite unsettling, such as an illustration of a humanoid figure with long, sharp fingers and a razor smile beckoning from behind an open door. The accompanying text read:

_Of all creatures in lonely places none are more deadly than the Deceiver, who awaits the unhappy traveler who stumbles through their doors. They are a master of mazes and woe betide the fool who becomes ensnared by their arts. Though they tell no lies, yet madness and confusion are their allies and staunchest weapons._

Martin turned the page quickly. He didn’t like the skeleton-grin and the hollow eyes of the figure in the drawing. On the next page was the same horse image that had been stamped on the cover, now shown in more detail and labeled _Each Uisge._

 _The shape-changing fey beast known as each uisge, the water horse, or the kelpie, may be found in lakes and rivers across Scotland. It may appear in human guise if it chooses, but in any shape it is a veritable demon; it is driven to drown and devour any souls who cross its path. Do not approach loose horses found on the riverbank or lakeshore, for merely to touch the_ each uisge _is certain demise. Their charms lure in the unwary and they have paved Scotland’s waterways with bones._

Maybe Scotland did have amphibious horses, after all. Martin filed the book alongside the other fictional accounts he’d found. At least, he assumed it was fiction. He tried not to think too hard of how he’d found himself wandering towards the strange horse that morning. Things like that didn’t really exist, did they? It was probably just the strange castle and his restless dreams getting the better of him. Still, might be wise not to get close to it next time. Ordinary wild horses were quite dangerous enough on their own without adding in anything about carnivorous faeries.

He lost himself in cataloging as the morning wore on. Tim and Sasha bantered back and forth, Martin repeatedly sneezed when dust got in his nose, and soon the floor and lower shelves around them were covered in semi-organized piles of books to sort through. And they hadn’t even taken a look at the loose piles of paper, hastily scribbled notes, blueprints, maps, navigational charts, artists’ portfolios, and a hundred other varieties of documentation. 

None of the books caught his eye quite like _Of the Waters and the Wild_ had, but there were more than a few interesting specimens. Many were in languages he had no hope of translating, but there were plenty in English. One purported to be a faithful accounting of a conversation between a shopkeeper and an embodiment of Death. Another was simply a list of ways to banish an unwanted brownie or spriggan from one’s property. A third was a rather gruesome recitation of ways to detect whether one’s relative had been stolen and replaced by a faery changeling, including “stick them with an iron pin.” Martin hoped no one had taken that seriously.

“Hey, Martin! You hungry?”

Tim’s sudden question startled him; he hoped he hadn’t visibly flinched. 

“What time is it?”

“Getting on towards noon, by the clock. Almost lunchtime! And it’s a delivery day.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, it’s the only day of the week when us hermits up here get a glimpse of the outside world. The deliverymen bring a cart up from town. You can order things and in a fortnight or three, they’ll bring you the closest they can find.”

“What kind of things?”

“Well,” said Tim airily, “last week I ordered myself a new pair of boots. From what I’m told, I’m likely to get something at least vaguely foot-shaped, but no promises.”

Martin thought of his only decent pair of shoes, now stained and a little warped by the damp. He also thought of his pocketbook. Maybe, if the prices were decent, he might be able to order something a little more suited to the Scottish climate. He put down the book he’d been scanning through and joined Tim and Sasha on their way to the small dining room.

Lunch consisted of thick soup with bread and hard boiled eggs. There was a small stove in one corner of the room and someone had left a large kettle on the hot iron. Martin poured himself a cup of tea, took a hopeful sip, and at once made a face.

Sasha saw him and laughed, not unkindly. “The tea here is dreadful, Martin.”

“It’s worse than that,” he exclaimed. “It’s a travesty!”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” said Tim.

“Yes it is,” Martin shot back. He could put up with a lot, but really, this was going too far. 

“You’re welcome to take it up with the kitchen,” Sasha offered. “Make it yourself instead.”

“I might just have to,” said Martin. He put down the offending mug of something that pretended to be tea and ate some soup to wash down the taste of it.

As they ate, Sasha and Tim told him a bit more about what they’d done here so far. As she’d said before, Sasha had arrived a month ago, Tim a week after that. Most of their time so far had just been spent grappling with the scale of the disorganization and trying to track down dictionaries in the different languages they’d need.

Sasha had actually studied library science and had a few papers on the history of British folk tales published from her time at Cambridge. Tim, to Martin’s surprise, had less relevant experience. He’d done some research work for a history professor during university, but up until recently he’d been working in finance. When this job had come up, he said, he took it as an opportunity to try something new. 

Naturally, that led to questions about Martin’s past. They weren’t unkind or suspicious, though Martin was surprised that Sasha, at least, hadn’t read his application. He sketched out the bare details: grew up in the North, much of his adult life in London. He told them he’d worked in a variety of industries: publishing, transport, commercial enterprise. What he failed to mention was that, in nearly all cases, he’d been working the lowest-paid, most menial job available. His lack of formal university education and the economic crash had seen to that. 

He hoped he made a fairly convincing job of it in the end. Neither Tim nor Sasha seemed to pick up that anything was wrong with his story. In the end, they all agreed to try Martin’s tea once he got in the kitchen and finished their lunches.

A woman appeared in the doorway to the small dining room just as the three of them were tidying up their plates. “Delivery’s here!” she announced. Unlike most of the rest of the staff that Martin had seen, she wore a bright and friendly expression.

The room echoed with mutters of “Thanks, Rosie,” and the few other workers hurried to finish their meals. Tim and Sasha stood and headed for the door.

“Who’s she?” asked Martin. The unusually friendly woman had gone off down the corridor ahead of them, presumably to greet the deliverymen.

“Rosie’s the housekeeper,” Sasha told him. “You want anything done around here, go through her.”

When they reached the courtyard, a small crowd of staff had already gathered. They clustered close around what looked to be a large wagon pulled by two big draft horses. The wagon held stacks of parcels and barrels and other intriguing items. Two men stood near the rear of the cart and sorted through parcels while a few staff queued for their turn. A crudely-painted sign on the side of the cart read, in stark white letters, _Breekon and Hope Deliveries._

Tim went to join the queue and Sasha, after asking around in the thin crowd of staff, got hold of a copy of their catalogue. It was sloppily printed on cheap paper and simply entitled “Goods. Payment in advance. No refunds.” It listed clothes, books, candles, dry goods, cloth, pig iron, and, strangely, an advertisement for a barber and dentist service. 

Martin pointed to the advert. “Has anyone ever…” 

“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Sasha. Martin took another look at the two deliverymen, presumably Breekon and Hope themselves. They were practically identical and had the look of men who one wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley or London backstreet, let alone with dentists’ tools in hand. 

Tim reached the front of the queue and Martin edged closer out of curiosity. One of the deliverymen handed him a smallish box, which Tim immediately opened to reveal a pair of used but decent-looking leather boots. Tim carried them away with a look of triumph. The three of them crossed the courtyard until they were out of earshot of the crowd around the cart. 

“Rosie says you never know what you’ll get from this lot, but these even look like they’ll fit.”

“What if they didn’t?” asked Martin.

Tim simply pointed to the catalogue that Sasha still held, with its title reading “Payment in Advance. No refunds.” Aloud, he said, “They don’t look like you’d want to mess with them.”

The queue around the cart was thinning out. There couldn’t have been more than twenty people or so in the courtyard, but from what he’d seen so far, Martin was willing to be that this was the vast majority of the staff, guards included. At the end of the queue, Daisy and Basira were waiting. When their turn came, Breekon (or possibly Hope) immediately handed over a small parcel, about the size of a hatbox, but clearly heavier than that from how they were holding it. The two captains of the guard immediately returned to the castle proper, box in hand.

“Hey,” said Sasha, scanning the catalogue. Martin looked where she was pointing. 

“1 pound tea. 11p.” He scanned over to the footwear section and quickly saw that a decent pair of boots was out of his price range, for now. But the tea was cheap…

“I’ll split it with you, Martin,” said Sasha. “I’ve been looking forward to some decent tea.”

“It’s a risk,” Tim cautioned. “I’m not sure you can trust them to bring you anything decent.”

But Martin was struck by a desire to accept Sasha’s offer. Sasha was buying tea with him; she wanted to try the tea he’d make. They wanted to _include_ him. Recklessly he said, “I’m going to get my wallet. Don’t let them leave, okay?”

“You got it,” said Tim, and Martin hurried off back into the castle.

He took no wrong turns, either on his way down to his room or on his way back, and was quietly, intensely proud of himself as he returned clutching his wallet. Breekon and Hope were dealing with the last few staff members placing orders. Sasha slipped him sixpence; he gave her back one, insisting on paying the lion’s share himself. 

The queue wasn’t long, hardly long enough to be called a queue at all, and in no time he was staring directly into the face of Hope (or perhaps Breekon). 

“What you ordering?” asked the deliveryman. To Martin’s surprise, he spoke in a ridiculously exaggerated Cockney accent. It should have been laughable, but somehow, any laughter died in his throat. Instead, he found he wanted nothing more than to place his order and get away as quickly as possible. He dropped his eleven pence into the man’s hand without touching the leathery skin. “A pound of tea, please.”

Breekon (or Hope) made a grunt of acknowledgement. Martin stepped out of line and hurried to join Tim and Sasha by the side of the courtyard. 

“A gambling man, I see,” said Tim. 

“So are you,” Martin said, gesturing at the boots. He briefly worried he’d gone too far, pushing back on Tim like that, but Tim only grinned at him. 

“I’ll be interested to try that tea, if you two will let me.”

“We’ll consider it,” said Sasha lightly. “But whilst we wait for the promised tea, we should all get back to work.”

It might have been Martin’s imagination, but all the books and papers seemed lighter that afternoon. His unease at meeting Breekon and Hope faded before the joy of feeling like his colleagues might also become his friends. 

The weather turned. Martin walked out on the walls before dinner to watch the sunset and saw heavy clouds massing to the east over the loch. No horse appeared on the shore. The wind, which had been gentle and pleasant that afternoon, started to whip and rush past him and carried the scent of rain. When he rose again at dawn after dreams of music, there was no question of going back down to the shore to watch the sunrise or look again for the strange horse. The wet had set in and would not be going anywhere for some time. 

The constant rain kept up for the better part of a week. Down in the Pit with Tim and Sasha, Martin scarcely saw or heard it, except for at mealtimes in the dining room. He missed the sky, but there was something not so bad about living by candlelight, surrounded by books and papers and two people whom he actually liked very much. With them he bemoaned papercuts and translation woes, nearly threw out his back carrying books until Sasha gave him a lecture on lifting with his legs, and laughed over many of the odd entries in Lord Bouchard’s collection.

On the third day of rain, the noises started.

Sasha came in from her office in the midafternoon. She’d been going through inventory in there for a few hours while Martin and Tim struggled over figuring out the translated titles of several books written in Farsi. They both jumped when Sasha entered the room, announcing, “Will you two come in here for a second? I need you to tell me if I’m hearing things.”

They put down their translation work and followed Sasha into her office. She kept the place quite organized: neatly stacked ledgers, carefully filed papers, notebooks kept in a precise hand. Truth be told, she probably had to -- there wasn’t space for clutter; there was barely enough space for a desk, a chair, and a bookcase. Martin and Tim filed in and stood around the desk.

“What are we supposed to --” began Tim, before Sasha raised a hand.

“Shh. Just listen.”

The silence stretched and Martin was just about to ask what he was meant to be hearing, when he caught a soft sound. It started barely on the edge of hearing and grew louder as he listened. It was strange, hard to describe or pin down, but it almost sounded like a distant popping or clicking. 

Sasha must have seen his expression. Glancing over, he saw that Tim wore an identical one. “You’re hearing that too?” she said.

“Yes,” said Tim. “Where’s it coming from?”

“It’s louder down by the floor,” Sasha said. Martin knelt to the flagstone floor and the sound grew subtly louder, though still muffled.

“Is there another floor underneath us?” asked Martin, confused.

“I don’t think so.” Sasha frowned. “I’ll ask Rosie, but as far as I know, we’re as far underground as any place in the castle. These are the cellars.”

“Could there be tunnels down there?” wondered Tim. “It almost sounds like someone digging.”

Sasha scowled at the floor, then looked up. “Okay. Head Librarian’s decision: work’s off for the afternoon. I want to figure this out.”

They found Rosie in the kitchens. She was inspecting the stores of salted meats and cheeses, but looked up with a bright expression when approached by the three librarians. 

“How are you getting on down there? Anything the matter?”

Sasha quickly explained the mysterious noises. The friendly smile faded from Rosie’s face as she spoke, replaced with a look of genuine concern.

“I’ve never heard of any tunnels under the lowest level. That does sound terribly odd.”

“Would you mind if we had a look around the cellars?” asked Sasha.

“Of course not.” She reached through her pockets, drew out an impressive ring of keys, detached one, and handed it to Sasha. “Just bring that back when you’re done, if you please.” 

“Of course.” Sasha pocketed the key, thanked Rosie for her time, and then they were off.

The key let them in through the back of the kitchens and down into the vaults where Lord Bouchard kept his expensive wines and stored household items. It turned out to be mostly dusty cobwebbed furniture. They found no trapdoors or secret tunnels. All in all, it turned out to be fairly disappointing, although Tim was impressed by some of the apparently rare vintages in Lord Bouchard’s collection. Apparently the lord was a connoisseur.

By the time they’d poked around all the old tables and chairs and tested all the flagstones and looked in every corner of the old cellar, it was time for dinner. Sasha returned the key to Rosie and they ended the day just as perplexed as when they’d first heard the sounds coming from under Sasha’s office. 

Over the next few days, they kept tabs on the noises in between working in the library. The noises didn’t continue all the time. They waxed and waned, came and went with no discernable pattern. Tim even asked Basira if she knew anything about the noises one morning at breakfast. She gave him a polite but firm denial. 

When the rains finally stopped, three days after the noises began, Martin went walking again at dawn. 

Mists hung low over the loch. The water was completely still, a flat gray mirror to the sky. From down on the beach below the bluffs, the tops of the castle’s walls and towers were shrouded in gray fog. The air was still and thick with water, and there was no sunrise to be seen, but it was still a beautiful morning for all that, Martin thought. 

Mist had obscured the full beach when he’d looked down from the bluffs, and this time he wasn’t surprised to see a dark shape on the shoreline when he reached the water’s edge. Martin didn’t get too close. He stood back and kept an eye on his morning companion. 

The horse gave him the equine equivalent of a scornful look. It pinned its ears and flashed its teeth at him. He held up his hands again, but this time in a backing-off gesture. He had no intention of getting any closer. 

Suddenly the horse’s expression changed. Its nostrils twitched at him as though it caught an unexpected scent. Its ears flicked forward and it stretched its neck out, sniffing in his direction. A moment later, it took a half-step forward. 

Martin waited and held his breath. He didn’t dare so much as twitch for fear of spooking the horse, which took another step towards him as it continued to scent the air. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet away when it stopped at last and its eyes widened, as if in surprise. An expression passed over its face that in a human might almost have been called shock and disgust. And then, it spun again, raced away down the beach, and quickly vanished into the mist. 

What a strange horse. Or maybe that old book he’d found had the right of it and he’d been running into a kelpie lately. It didn’t seem likely or even really possible, but it was at least an entertaining thought. 

The following morning’s walk was beautiful, under clear skies and a gentle wind. No horse greeted him as the sun rose over the waters. Instead, he was greeted by something he could never have predicted as he came down into the library with Sasha and Tim after breakfast. Lord Bouchard stood outside the door to Sasha’s office.

Martin hadn’t seen him since that first day when he’d signed the employment contract. It seemed he liked to keep to himself on the upper floors of the castle. But here he was, in the library corridor, dressed immaculately and smiling like the cat who’d found the cream.

“Welcome, librarians. Thank you for all your diligent work so far; it’s been much appreciated. However, I’ve come to the realization that if this task is to be completed in a timely manner, you will need additional supervision. Therefore, I have found you a new colleague. He will be an additional assistant librarian until the bulk of the reorganization process is complete.”

Lord Bouchard cleared his throat in a way that somehow gave the impression of being a summons. A moment later, from the door further down the corridor that led to the library, a man stepped out. 

He was slight and short and wearing a slightly rumpled shirt and vest. He’d tied back his long, gray-streaked dark hair. His expression was one of faint disdain.

Lord Elias continued, “Jon, come introduce yourself to your new colleagues.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actual verbal interaction coming up! Bets on how long it'll take Martin to connect the dots? And I'm sure everything's fine with that tea folks, don't worry about it.
> 
> “Of the waters and the wild” is taken from a line in “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats: “Come away, O human child!/ To the waters and the wild/ With a faery, hand in hand,/ For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
> 
> Also, I realize that each uisge, kelpies, and other types of mythological water horse are not necessarily all interchangeable according to some scholars, but I’m going to use those terms that way for this particular AU. Apologies for taking liberties here. 
> 
> Also also I know approximately as much about library science as S1 Jon canonically does and I apologize for that as well.


	3. The Fourth Librarian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Reel for the Watcher, Part One: The Water Horse, continued.
> 
> Verbal interaction here we come! Will Jon prove to possess any social skills whatsoever? Probably not!
> 
> CW: creepy mind control and mentions of blood and gore involving knives, brief allusion to self-harm with said knife (doesn’t actually happen but is implied in a hypothetical situation and not described in detail). This stuff is all in the section that begins with "He was standing alone" if you want to skip.

The new arrival stepped carefully past Lord Bouchard and held out a hand to Sasha.

“You must be Ms. James?” he asked. 

“Yes. Welcome to the library,” said Sasha, who was clearly taken aback by the whole situation and trying hard to cover for it. 

“Thank you,” he said without warmth. He stepped back and eyed Tim and Martin. Tim was the next to reach out a hand, but his usual friendliness was gone. 

“Tim Stoker,” he said.

“Call me Jon,” replied the new librarian flatly. 

Martin put on his widest smile in hopes of breaking through Jon’s icy affect. “And I’m Martin Blackwood.”

Jon took his hand and shook it. His skin was cold and he pulled away from the handshake so quickly that it bordered on rudeness. He made no reply. 

“Well, I can see we’re all getting along splendidly,” Lord Bouchard said. “Don’t let me keep you; I know you have plenty of work to attend to.” He headed for the spiral staircase and they all stepped back to let him pass. Martin noticed that in Jon’s case, it was more like a jump back. 

An awkward silence stretched in the wake of Bouchard’s departure. Jon was glaring at the floor. At length, Sasha clapped her hands together to break the silence.

“All right. We’d best get to work. Jon, I’m afraid I didn’t see your application, so would you mind telling me what you specialize in?”

“Specialize?”

“What have you worked in? What are you trained in?”

“I’ll do whatever is needed,” Jon said stiffly. 

“...Very well, why don’t you help Martin with sorting through those papers from yesterday?”

Jon gave a curt nod and turned back towards the library door without so much as a glance at Martin. Martin hurried after him. 

“We had no idea you were coming! When did you get here?”

“I came in last night,” said Jon. 

“Where did you come from?”

“London.”

“What, er, what kind of work were you doing there?”

Finally, Jon turned to face him. “Mr. Blackwood, I’d much rather concentrate on the work at hand than engage in pointless small talk. Are you quite finished?” His eyes were cold.

“Oh. Okay then.” Martin shrank back. Things had been going so well with Tim and Sasha, and now this new assistant librarian had shown up and seemed to have no interest in even a baseline level of politeness. Which was really too bad, because he was actually kind of pretty, in an unconventional, sharp sort of way. 

Maybe he just needed time to warm up. Maybe he’d been traveling for a long time and was still tired from the journey. Maybe all he needed was a really good cup of tea. Martin sighed. He’d let Jon settle in and try again later. 

He briefly explained the job from the previous day. He and Tim had found a box full of what appeared to be random loose-leaf pages, scribbled over in eccentrically spelled but still discernible English. Martin had been going through them to try and figure out their proper order. From his initial skim-through, they appeared to be pages from someone’s journal. The writer had lived in rural Scotland and, apparently, had had a fairly mundane existence, full of shearing season and milking and piling up wood for the fire in winter. Whoever they’d been, they’d clearly never intended anyone else to read their work. The entries were devoid of context and disjointed, breaking off in the middle of stories and bouncing around in time. Some were ordinary, farmer-like complaints about milk spoiling, ewes losing their lambs, and foul weather. Others were stranger, like a list of every species of bird the writer had seen in a week, or a long-running but rather obscure narrative about the writer’s relations with a mysterious group of individuals referred to only as “them from the hills.” Martin couldn’t make sense of it.

“See, this one almost looks like a shopping list, but then below it, it just launches into a poem about the forest in winter.” The poetry was actually quite decent, Martin thought. He was a bit of a poet himself and knew good verse when he saw it. He handed the page in question to Jon, who, upon reading it, looked as though he’d suddenly bitten into something bitter but said nothing.

“So, see if you can find where that continues,” Martin said encouragingly, “and then fit it in with the rest.”

Jon wordlessly began sorting through the other pages. He certainly had a work ethic -- it took the rest of the morning to sort through the large box and organize all the pages, and Jon didn’t pause for a minute, or even so much as speak unless Martin asked him a direct question. When Tim announced a break for lunch, Jon didn’t even look up.

“I’ll stay here,” he said. “See you all later.”

“You’re not having lunch?” asked Sasha.

“Go on without me.”

Sasha looked as if she were about to argue, but Tim spoke up before she could get the words out. “It’s all right, Sasha; he’s obviously not hungry. He’ll be fine down here.” He beckoned to Martin, who left the room with one glance back to Jon. Their new colleague was still sat cross-legged on the floor, scrutinizing one of the pages of the strange journal. He didn’t turn to watch them go.

Up in the staff dining room, Tim claimed their usual table by the window. Once they’d all gotten their plates -- Martin carefully avoided the tea -- he leaned across the table and spoke in as low of a voice as he ever did.

“So, can all agree that this is bullshit?”

“What do you mean?” Martin asked.

“I mean our newest assistant librarian. Sasha, Bouchard didn’t even let you know he was coming! That’s ridiculous! You’re in charge down there; you should have reviewed his application. I mean, who  _ is _ he? Why’s he here?”

Sasha sighed. “I don’t know, Tim. I’ve got no idea beyond what Lord Bouchard said.”

“Martin, you were working with him all morning. Did he tell you anything?”

Martin shook his head. 

“Do we even know his surname, or is he just ‘Jon?’ And it’d be one thing if he was at least a decent person, but so far he seems a right --”

“Tim.” Sasha cut him off. “Not the time or place.”

“And we hardly know him,” Martin interjected. “First impressions, you know how it is. Maybe we should give him a chance.”

Tim threw his hands up. “Fine! Fine. You all win. But I don’t like him, for the record. And I’m not going to be the one to go down there and tell him it’s delivery day. He can just sit down there in the Pit.”

“That’s fair,” Sasha said. “I’ll see if I can talk to Lord Bouchard about it, try to get some more information, but I don’t have high hopes. We may just have to rely on what Jon tells us.”

Tim just made a skeptical face by way of reply. Martin decided to concentrate on his lunch.

The skies were overcast as the staff assembled in the courtyard for the delivery, but it wasn’t threatening to rain imminently. This time, Martin, Tim, and Sasha had arrived early enough to watch from the walls as the delivery wagon trundled up the greenway and through the open gates. The two deliverymen, Breekon and Hope, sat next to one another in the driver’s box. As the wagon ground through the mud in the courtyard, Martin saw two women sat on the back of the wagon. They jumped down as the wagon came to a stop.

Neither looked like any of the castle staff, and Martin figured there were few enough staff that even now he could recognize them all by sight. Both were dressed in practical clothing, good for long roads and hard weather, long coats and sturdy boots. One carried a small notebook and pencil under one arm. Almost as soon as she hit the ground, she seemed to be scanning the courtyard for something.

“Who are they?” Martin asked.

“No idea,” said Sasha with a shrug. “I’ve never seen them before.”

The unknown woman with the notebook had cornered Rosie. Her companion stood just beside her. From this distance, Martin couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Rosie looked profoundly nonplussed. 

Martin went downstairs and joined the queue already forming at the wagon. He found himself fidgeting as the first few staff members spoke with the deliverymen. When his turn came and Breekon or Hope looked into his eyes, he felt a sudden swoop in his stomach and then a strange, distant coldness. 

“What?” muttered the deliveryman.

“I, er, ordered some tea last week.” 

“Not here yet. Try again next time.” And then Martin turned out of the line, blissfully free, and the sun felt warm again. He truly, deeply, did not like those men. Something was definitely off with them and he doubted he’d be ordering anything else if he could help it.

He was still gathering himself when something moved in the corner of his eye. He flinched a little, still on edge, and turned to see the two women who’d ridden in on the cart. The one with the notebook raised a hand.

“Do you have a moment to talk?”

“...I suppose? What is this about, if you don’t mind my asking?”

She held out a hand. “Melanie King. And this is my partner, Georgie Barker.” The woman beside her gave a small nod. “We’ve just come to the village. We’re journalists working on a story in the area for  _ Doyle’s _ magazine.”

“Pleased to meet you both. I’m Martin Blackwood, and I’m happy to talk to you, but I’m honestly not sure how helpful I’ll be. I’m afraid I’ve only just arrived here myself.”

“Oh, no need to worry about that,” said Melanie, gesturing for him to accompany them to the side of the courtyard, near the wall. “Anything you might know will be helpful.”

“What story are you working on?” 

Georgie Barker spoke up this time. “Mr. Blackwood, this area has a higher rate of disappearances than any region in Scotland of comparable size and population. Six times higher, in fact. People just vanish around here.”

“Really?” 

“Yes. We’ve been looking at parish records, talking to people in the village, even visiting a few cemeteries. All the information we can find points to an enormous number of people going missing in this district -- at least a few dozen a year, each year, and in an area with such a small population, that is actually a remarkable number.”

“What’s happening to all those people?” exclaimed Martin. This certainly hadn’t been included in the advertisement he’d seen in the paper when he applied.

“No one knows,” said Melanie. 

“Do you have any theories?” Almost despite himself, Martin found his gaze drift over to Breekon and Hope’s wagon. No, he told himself, that was ridiculous. 

“Highwaymen, maybe? As of right now, though, we’re still chasing down any leads we can get. You said you’re new to the area, but is there any chance you’ve heard of anything?”

On a foggy day with the Breekon and Hope wagon crouched in the courtyard, it wasn’t too hard to remember his strange first conversation with Basira on the way to the castle. He realized with some surprise that he might have something to say after all.

“When I came here, I was told by the Co-Captain of the Guard that they’ve had a lot of trouble on the roads. You’re probably right about it being highwaymen. Lord Bouchard told me something similar as well.”

Melanie was making brisk notes. “Would you mind pointing out the captain? Are they here?”

Martin glanced around the courtyard. Basira was stood near the cart, back to one of the castle walls, evidently keeping an eye on Breekon and Hope. Daisy was nowhere to be seen. 

“That’s her. Basira Hussain.”

Melanie made some final notes. “Thank you, Mr. Blackwood. Final questions: do you work here in the castle?”

“Yes, in the library. I’m an assistant there.”

“Would you mind if we followed up with you some time in the future? For the story?”

“Of course not,” Martin told her. 

Georgie put in, “Come find us in the village if you’re ever there. We’re staying at the inn.”

Martin smiled. They seemed to be doing good work, these journalists, and they were kind on top of it. Like Sasha and Tim, they were inviting him in. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Melanie and Georgie made their farewells and headed over towards Basira. Martin rejoined Sasha and Tim, who’d been watching from the walls. Tim instantly demanded all the details about the unusual new arrivals. Martin gave them a brief summary of the conversation, then asked, “Have either of you heard anything about disappearances?”

“No,” said Sasha with a frown, “not apart from what you heard from Basira and Lord Bouchard.”

“Nothing,” Tim added. 

Down in the courtyard, it looked as though Melanie and Georgie weren’t getting any answers either. Basira had crossed her arms and, though none of the librarians could hear the conversation, it was obvious that she had decided not to cooperate with the press. As Breekon and Hope packed up their wagon, Melanie and Georgie returned to sitting on the back. Martin watched them go with an odd sense of foreboding. He didn’t like to see them both fading away along the greenway, in the wagon that belonged to people who scared him as deeply and inexplicably as Breekon and Hope did.

He said nothing, of course. Tim and Sasha might think him stupid or superstitious or childishly frightened, and maybe they woudn’t be wrong, but he didn’t want to wreck what chances of friendship he had with them.

If Martin had the beginnings of a tenuous friendship with Melanie and Georgie, he had nothing but iciness with Jon. When he, Tim, and Sasha returned to the library, they found Jon sat right on the stone floor where they had left him. He was staring at one of the journal pages that he and Martin had been filing that morning. He looked as though he might not have moved during all the time they’d taken to eat lunch and attend the day’s delivery. 

He didn’t even look up when his three colleagues entered, and he only spared a glance at Sasha when she deliberately coughed behind him. 

“Are you well?” he asked, sounding exasperated at having to make the effort of social niceties.

“Fine, thank you,” said Sasha. “What have you been doing this whole time?”

“Working,” Jon snapped. 

“On what?”

“These, for a start. They’re all wrong.” He waved his hand at the papers stacked on the floor. 

“What do you mean they’re all wrong?”

“Charitably, the writer had no idea what they’re talking about.”

Tim stepped in. “You do realize that all of these accounts are fairy tales, right?”

Jon glared at him, then turned to Sasha. “What would you rather have me doing?”

“Put those back in order, please. Then, why don’t you make a start on that shelf over there?” Sasha waved at a bookshelf fairly bursting with disorganized tomes and papers. 

Jon muttered something inaudible but did as he was told. Martin exchanged a sympathetic glance with Sasha and Tim mouthed  _ “See?”  _ behind Jon’s back. The quiet banter they’d been exchanging prior to Jon’s arrival was gone. Martin thought the library felt colder than ever.

Jon did not turn up at dinner. The other three librarians ate together as usual, but much of their time was spent quietly wondering just where Jon had come from and what he was doing here. 

“You’re his boss, you know,” Tim said to Sasha. “You can order him to be nicer.”

“I’d rather not. It doesn’t tend to work out that way. Telling people to play nice usually just backfires.”

“Can’t you fire him?”

“I doubt it. Lord Bouchard brought him in; I’m guessing he’s the only one who can fire him.”

“Maybe he’ll get better?” wondered Martin.

“Martin, not everyone is a good and lovely and kind person,” said Tim. “Sorry to burst your bubble there.”

Martin didn’t have an answer to that. He pushed some of the stew around his bowl rather than look at Tim in the eye. Mercifully, Sasha didn’t let the silence stretch.

“I’d like to keep looking into whatever’s going on under my office. I think it’s clear from our explorations that there’s not another tunnel leading down there from the cellars, and the noise definitely seems loudest right around my desk, so I’m thinking we might want to check under there.”

“Like a secret trapdoor?” Martin looked up at that. Secret trapdoors sounded awfully exciting. 

“Exactly,” said Sasha. 

“But how could someone be getting in and out without you noticing, if there really is someone down there?”

Sasha actually glanced around the room, then dropped her voice before she spoke. “You both realize this place is… weird, right?”

“Weird how?” Tim wanted to know.

“The road leading in here, for one. How does the grass grow like that? Then there’s the fact that the only visitors are a couple of odd deliverymen. How about the fact that the castle is crumbling, heavily guarded despite the total absence of any apparent threats --”

“--Highwaymen, like those reporters Martin met were saying --”

“It just doesn’t add up. I asked Rosie and she’s never heard of any actual violence on the roads. The journalists were right. The library’s got a collection of newspapers from local towns and I took a quick look through them, and people really do go missing around here. Where do they go?”

“How does your hypothetical trapdoor relate to any of that? I’m sorry, Sasha, I’m not trying to be difficult, I just don’t understand your point,” Tim said.

“Look. This place is weird. Maybe the sound under my office is part of that weirdness? Will you at least help me move the desk out of the way to check?”

“Of course,” Martin said quickly. 

“Sure,” Tim added. “But we don’t bring Jon in.”

“Fine,” Sasha agreed. 

Martin went to bed feeling uneasy. The sudden appearance of an unfriendly colleague had left him unsteady all day long. Add to that the disturbing rumors about disappearances, the investigation of the noises in Sasha’s office, and Martin’s own ever-present worries, and he wasn’t surprised to find himself staring at the shadowy ceiling long into the night. 

Things had been going so well with Tim and Sasha, and now here was Jon, making things complicated. Why couldn’t he just be nicer so they could all get along? He was grateful that Tim and Sasha clearly considered Martin a friend, but he wanted to fix the whole situation, smooth things out into a neat and warm closeness, and he didn’t know how. 

He thought he’d keep trying to get through to Jon. It had only been one day, after all, and you never knew with some people; first impressions could be really disastrously wrong. 

And what could possibly be the danger that haunted these roads and hills? Martin turned it over and over in his head and couldn’t find an answer. He hoped those two journalists could work it out. They’d seemed to know what they were doing. If only they could stay away from Breekon and Hope, he thought. He couldn’t pin down what he didn’t like about them, but the thought of Georgie and Melanie spending too much time on that rickety old wagon made his stomach twist. 

Sometime past midnight, his eyes drifted closed at last.

He was standing alone. The sky was shrouded in mist and he could barely see his own outstretched hand, let alone any details of his surroundings. His feet were bare and he could feel damp grass brushing against his soles. 

“Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone there?”

At first, nothing answered. Then a gust of wind blew past him, nearly bowling him over. It pushed back the mist until Martin saw that he was stood in the center of an old ring of stones. They were jagged and broken and obviously ancient. One or two had fallen over. The ring was about ten yards in diameter, and beyond the circle’s borders, the mist still shifted and spun in an impenetrable wall of white. The grass was brown and dry beneath him. 

Martin called again. Nothing happened. He stepped forward and faced one of the gaps between the stones, then reached out a hand into the mist. He instantly jerked his arm back with a curse under his breath: the fog was so cold that it burned.

Martin rubbed his hand until some of the warmth started to come back. The skin didn’t look damaged, fortunately. He turned to one of the stones and, now that he was up close, saw the remains of what must have been an intricate, winding carving across its surface. He could make out swirls and knots, some of which reminded him at once of the carvings on Lord Bouchard’s door. There were cleverly hidden eyes worked into the design. Towards the center of the carving, the swirling designs parted and framed a central scene. It showed a rearing horse, ears pinned, stone waves rolling beneath its hooves. Its teeth looked just a little too sharp to be realistic. Standing out of the waves were three human figures. Two were turned away from the horse in obvious terror, but the central figure stood firm and unafraid. It held something in one hand and brandished it at the beast, but what the object was, Martin couldn’t have said. Time and the elements had worn it away. 

Martin took a step back from the stone. As he did so, a faint note of music rose on the wind. He froze in place and listened intently, and soon enough the first note was followed by another and another.

“Who’s there?”

In answer, the music louder and louder, approaching seemingly from every direction at once. He recognized it now; it was the wild melody he’d heard half a dozen times and more already in his dreams. He could never remember how the tune went when he woke, but when he slept it was as if the song was in his bones all along and he’d only needed to be reminded. 

Before, it had always been a joyful, dancing thing. It had swept Martin onto and off of his dreaming feet and eased his fears and made him laugh with sheer happiness. Now, although he was certain the music itself hadn’t changed, it was the same tune, same instruments, same key, there was something dreadful about it. A picture of the things playing it flashed through his mind and he saw crooked teeth, a ragged and hungry smile, fingers of silver and bone. His feet began to twitch. It was the kind of tune that would dance you through water and air and fire, a tune for bitter earth and killing ice, a tune to make you wrap your hand around a knife and carve yourself a smile in red. It was a breaking and freezing and binding song. 

He wanted to run. He wanted to cry. He wanted to dance.

\-- A crashing sound brought Martin gasping into wakefulness. He sat bolt upright and waited for his heart to slow. Thank God it had only been a dream. 

The crash, whatever it was, must have come from the corridor, because his little room was as dark and undisturbed as ever. Once his legs stopped shaking, he got out of bed, lit his lantern, and carefully peered out the door.

The corridor was as still as ever. Tim and Sasha and, he presumed, Jon, all had rooms off this same corridor, but none of their doors had opened. He briefly considered waking them, or at least Tim and Sasha, but decided he’d rather not disturb their sleep. For his own part, he was well awake and not likely to fall back asleep for some time, not after the dream he’d been having, so he raised his lantern and headed down the corridor to investigate. 

He saw nothing that could have made the crash in the first corridor, and he continued on. When he turned into the passage leading to the library and held his lantern light up, his eye caught on Sasha’s office door.

The door itself was a thick, sturdy construction of oak and iron, clearly old but in good repair. Until now, that was. Now, a black mark had been blasted across its face, concentrated around the keyhole. It looked as though someone had tried and failed to burn the door. 

Quickly Martin cast about the corridor, but there was no one around. He could see no other lights apart from his own lantern. His heart, scarcely recovered after the dream, started hammering again. Whoever had attacked the office door, they must still be close by.

Martin had never thought of himself as brave. He couldn’t, didn’t want to, face this one by himself. Cautiously he retreated back where he’d come, back to the corridor where the librarians had their rooms. He knocked on Sasha’s door.

A moment later she opened it. She was in her sleeping clothes and she blinked hard in the sudden light of Martin’s lantern. “What’s going on?”

“Did you hear that crashing sound just now? It looks like someone tried to get to your office.”

Instantly, all the sleepiness vanished from her face. She retrieved her own lantern from her room. “Let’s you and I go have a look.”

“You don’t want to wake Tim? Or er, Jon?”

“We can wake them if we need to. We’ll take a look first.”

Still shaking a little, Martin accompanied Sasha back to her office door. As before, there was no sign of the culprit. 

“That’s odd,” whispered Sasha. She ran her finger along the burn mark and came away with a fingertip covered in soot. “What could have done this? Who would want to?”

“The noises?”

She nodded. “Let’s search the library. Do you want to start in the north section --”

“I’m sorry, but can we not split up?”

A pause, then, “All right. We’ll start in the north section together.”

Martin felt a little better with Sasha at his side. For her part, she betrayed no sign of nerves as they scanned the stacks together. A thorough search of the library commenced, but they found no one and nothing out of place. At last, in the far end of the south section, they had to admit defeat.

“Should we look in the rest of the castle?” Martin asked.

Sasha replied, “There wouldn’t be much point, I’m afraid. They could be anywhere by now.”

“That’s true. So what do we do?”

Sasha looked around with a sigh. “Let’s get back to bed. We’ll discuss this with Tim in the morning and see what we can think of.” Her expression was fiercely determined. “I am going to figure out what’s going on here.”

They returned to their beds, but Martin didn’t sleep. Eventually, he got up and dressed, too restless to stay in bed, and crept out to the courtyard. He flinched from every shadow but made it there unscathed and was surprised to find he’d timed his excursion perfectly; dawn had just broken and the gate stood open, with one of the lower-ranking castle guards stood nearby. Heavy clouds covered the sky, but Martin decided to head down to the loch anyway. He rather liked the sound of the water to start his day. Hopefully it would help calm him down.

He saw the horse from a long way off this time. It was wading through the shallows a little ways off from the path down from the castle. Martin felt a little silly but he waved to it anyway. It nearly counted as an old friend at this point, and he could overlook unfriendliness in wild animals much more readily than he could in humans. It was the same as with cats -- it was hard to be hurt when a cat ignored you; they only followed their nature. 

The horse raised its head and briefly looked at him with pricked ears. Rather than bolt this time, it turned to face the deeper water and stared out across the loch, much the same as Martin himself. Seconds stretched into minutes and the horse didn’t move. Martin might not know much about horses, but he did know that most of them didn’t spend long periods of time stood still and staring off into empty water and air. 

“You’re a very odd horse,” he said aloud.

One of the horse’s ears flicked his way, then back again. It gave the distinct impression of deliberately ignoring him. 

“All right then, I won’t disturb you any further,” said Martin. He just stood on the beach and breathed and watched the sky lighten and tried hard to think of nothing at all, until he reckoned it must be nearly time for breakfast.

The horse was still unmoving in the shallows when he returned to the castle. 

In hushed tones, Martin and Sasha caught Tim up on the night’s events over breakfast. As Martin had suspected, Tim was keen on both continuing their investigations of the noises under the office, and on not telling Jon anything. 

“This has to be someone in the castle,” he said. “Maybe it’s even Jon. Someone’s trying to get into your office through the door and under the floor. Until we know who it is, best to keep it to ourselves.”

“Maybe we should stop talking about it in the dining room,” Martin suggested.

“We’ll figure out another private spot,” said Sasha. “For now, let’s get to work.”

Jon waited for them at the entrance to the library. “You three are late,” he said sharply.

“Good morning, Jon. I gave us permission,” Sasha replied coldly. 

Without another word, Jon turned and entered the library. Tim made a wincing face at Martin and Sasha before following him. Martin’s hopes that a night’s rest might make a difference in Jon’s temperament had been thoroughly dashed. With a resigned sigh, he settled into the day’s work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon is such a disaster.
> 
> I’ve been burning through RQG and I gotta say whenever I write Sasha (James, archival assistant), a part of my brain just wants to make her into Sasha (Rackett, dagger enthusiast). 
> 
> Doyle’s magazine is named for Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes and noted believer in spiritualism, or the practice of attempting to communicate with the dead, which was extremely popular in 19th century England. Basically I wanted a magazine name that sounded vaguely plausible/legit but boiled down to a version of What the Ghost?/Ghost Hunt UK.


	4. The Hollow Hill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Reel for the Watcher, Part One: The Water Horse, continued.
> 
> Martin goes for a walk around the castle. Surely nothing too bad can happen, right?
> 
> CW: mind control, injury, blood

They moved Sasha’s desk that evening. Tim had insisted on doing it at a time when Jon wasn’t around, and they got their first chance shortly after dinner. None of them had seen him leave, but they returned from the staff dining room to find an empty library, a deserted corridor, and no signs of life in Jon’s room. Sasha had even knocked on the door and gotten no answer.

“It’s not like that’s any assurance,” Tim remarked. “It’d be just like him not to answer the door.”

“Are you ready to do this or not?” Sasha unlocked her office door.

Tim sighed. “Let’s get it done, then.”

The noises had come and gone over the days but the office was silent just now. Sasha had cleared off the surface of the desk in preparation for the move. The result was that her tiny office was more cluttered than ever before, though she’d been careful to leave a clear path to the door. Martin picked his way through stacks of papers and books until he stood at the far side of the desk. With one side pushed up against the wall, that left Tim, Sasha, and Martin to take one side each. Sasha shut the office door behind them. 

The desk looked heavy and felt even heavier. It was made out of some old hardwood that Martin couldn’t identify and was held together through large iron fastenings. The bulk of it was built so low to the floor that getting a proper look at the flagstones without shifting the thing was basically impossible. After much swearing on Tim’s part, they managed to shift it across the floor with a scraping, groaning noise. When they’d moved it about three feet, Sasha called a halt and Martin let go with deep gratitude. His arms were already sore.

Martin now had the best vantage point to look behind the desk. Sasha handed him a lantern and he knelt in the narrow space to get a good look at the floor.

There was nothing. Just smooth flagstone on the floor joined to rougher, but still solid, stone wall. He ran his hand across it to make sure, but felt nothing out of the ordinary.

“I don’t see anything,” he told the others.

Tim and Sasha both checked it themselves. None of them could find anything unusual. The strange noises stayed silent. 

“Well, boss,” said Tim, “what’s the next plan?”

Sasha paused for a moment to think. “Move the desk back, I think. Then, let’s all look through the local papers when we can. Maybe there’s a pattern in the disappearances.”

“We could always talk to those reporters in town,” Martin suggested.

“Good idea, Martin. Why don’t you head out there when you have a chance?”

“I could go tomorrow,” he offered. Tomorrow was his day off and a trip to town should be easy to arrange.

“You don’t have to use your free day.”

“I don’t mind, really. It’s not like I had any grand plans for it.”

“All right then. Thank you.” Sasha gave him a quick smile. “Let’s get this desk moved back into place.”

At breakfast the next morning, Martin went looking for Basira, remembering Lord Bouchard’s orders not to go unaccompanied to the village. Tim and Sasha had decided to go boating on the loch, which left Martin to venture out to the gatehouse alone. 

The gatehouse looked small and run-down nestled next to the massive iron-worked gates. The door was firmly shut. Martin knocked apprehensively. There was a brief silence, and then the door was jerked open so abruptly that Martin flinched backward. 

It wasn’t Basira. Instead, Daisy stood framed in the doorway, dressed in the black-and-silver guard’s uniform and scowling at him. “What?” she demanded.

“Er, I was hoping to go into town today; is Basira in?” said Martin in a rush.

“No.”

“Could… could anyone else accompany me to town? I was told not to go alone.”

“No. Try again next time.” She shut the door firmly in his face. 

Martin stood still and blinked. All right, then. Not going to town today after all.

He checked back in the staff dining room and the library, but couldn’t find Tim and Sasha. Probably they’d already left for the loch. Jon, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

He idly flipped through a couple of the books, considering whether he ought to get a head start on the following day’s work. But it had been so nice out, and he’d hardly been out of the castle since he arrived. 

So Martin found himself heading out the front gate of the castle and taking the path down by the shore. He’d have a little walk in the hills. It was only going to town that he needed an escort, after all, and the day was clear and breezy, the wind rippling through the long grass, but not quite enough to stir up white caps on the water. A perfect day for a hike. 

He looked for Tim and Sasha on the shore by the small boathouse built near the cliffs. It was a curious placement because he’d have expected the boathouse to be over the water, but instead it was built a dozen yards or so from the shore. If someone wanted to take a boat out, they’d have to drag it down to the water. One of the rowboats was missing and Martin figured that must be a sign of Tim and Sasha. Shading his eyes against the glare, he could see a distant shape on the water that was probably his colleagues in the boat. They were far too distant to call to, and anyway, he decided he didn’t want to disturb them. They were likely having a grand time out there. No need to impose his company. 

The shore was empty apart from Martin himself. Not even the gray horse was anywhere to be seen. He followed the line of the shore towards the little forest. A flock of shorebirds scattered as he passed. 

It was only about a five-minute walk down to the edge of the trees. They were wedged between a steep, grassy slope on one side and the water on another. The roots of the trees seemed to go all the way down to the water. Not far beyond the edge of the forest, the bottom of the loch suddenly dropped away into darkness, so that the roots of the trees vanished into deep water. As he approached, he saw that the plant growth looked quite dense, all low hanging branches and thick underbrush. He couldn’t name the species of plants. Maybe he could find a book in the library later to look them up. A gust of wind blew the scent of pine needles and damp moss. 

Martin spotted what looked like a deer trail through the middle of the strip of trees and decided to follow it. He pushed several overgrown pine branches aside and stepped into the shadow of the forest. All at once the sounds of the wind and shorebirds died away. There was a great stillness to the trees. No birds moved through the canopy; no squirrels rustled the undergrowth. It was just wet earth, mossy tree trunks, and ferns. The only sound came from Martin himself as he pushed through the vegetation along the trail.

He hadn’t gone more than a few steps before the sound of rustling leaves and snapping branches from his passage started to sound uncomfortably loud. He found himself moving more carefully, trying not to unnecessarily disturb the foliage. He was no great outdoorsman and largely failed. When he stepped on and broke a particularly large branch, he actually winced. 

Martin slowed. It was getting cold under the trees. The sunlight seemed dimmer than he would have expected as it filtered through the canopy. The silence seemed to hang palpably in the air. He could have almost sworn the trees were frowning at him, and even their bark seemed to swirl and form patterns of eyes. 

There was something wrong with this forest. He didn’t know what it was and he couldn’t explain it, but he very much wanted to be anywhere but here. He turned, carefully, to face the way he’d come, and his heart sank. There was no sign of the trail, and indeed, the foliage seemed thicker than it had been. He reached out to push through the branches but at once found they were too tightly woven together. He couldn’t go back. Nor could he turn to the left or right, towards the hill or the water. He was boxed in. 

Martin’s breath caught. His heart hammered hard. This was impossible; trails didn’t simply vanish like this. Only moments before, he’d come through this exact way. The air got closer and tighter and colder. 

He couldn’t just stand there, and with a sudden desperate resolution, he shoved himself forward along the trail. The forest hadn’t been that big. He’d have to come to the other end of it soon. 

A rotting log gave way under his foot and sent him tumbling forward onto his hands and knees. As he fell, a broken branch scratched his cheek. He scrambled to his feet, covered in mud, and hurtled forward. He’d given up trying to be quiet. He just wanted out of the trees. 

Leaves stuck in his clothes and hair. Roots and vines seemed to catch at him. He clawed his way over fallen logs and squeezed through tight-growing tree trunks. He could imagine something behind him, closing the path in his wake, tracking his footsteps, and biding its time. It would catch him any second. 

Slowly, agonizingly, the light in front of him grew brighter. He was breathing hard now from fighting through the dense branches, but the approaching edge of the trees fired him up, and he redoubled his efforts. At last, he shoved aside a curtain of pine branches and stumbled, quite suddenly, out into the light. The forest stopped as cleanly as it had begun. Sound and light poured back into the world. Nothing was chasing him. He was out.

Martin sat on a nearby rock and caught his breath. His clothes were badly ripped and his hands bleeding from where brambles had snared him. He was bruised and covered in mud and reeking of damp and wood rot. But he was out of the woods and alive. He could even see the castle from here, around the curve of the shore.

What he couldn’t see, he realized with a sinking feeling, was a direct way back there. The small forest filled up the gap between the loch and the hill, and the slope of the hill was steeper than he’d guessed. It was nearly a cliff, albeit one covered in grass. He stood and tested it out, but saw that if he tried to climb the slope, he’d quickly fall back down into the forest. So it was either swim through the loch, go back through the woods, or follow the shore away from the castle in hopes of doubling back and circling the far side of the hill to return to the castle. 

The choice was obvious. Martin stood and followed the shore. 

There was a small, relatively flat space between the foot of the hill and the shore of the loch, and Martin followed another deer trail along this route. It was impossible to see far ahead because the shore curved around to the right, out of Martin’s view. He couldn’t get a sense of how far he might have to walk. 

Nothing for it. It would have taken a lot to get Martin to walk back into that little forest. He walked determinedly on.

Soon he was sweating despite the breeze. The sun rose higher and he started to wish he’d thought to bring water. Why had he even come on this hike? What had possessed him to enter the trees? His shoes and clothing were exactly the wrong thing for this and he was getting hungry. He paused for a moment, knelt by the water, cupped his hand, and drank a little from the loch. He hoped he wouldn’t get sick later as he didn’t have any means of boiling the water out here. At least the water looked clear enough.

To pass the time as he walked, he recited his poetry to himself. When he ran out of his old memorized poems, he tried to compose another, but the words wouldn’t come, even though he was in a place with the kind of natural beauty that should have provided plenty of inspiration. At last he resorted to simply marching along in silence. Every so often he glanced over at the loch, hoping to see Tim and Sasha close enough that he might call them for rescue, but he couldn’t even see their boat anymore. 

The sun had moved considerably from his original position by the time he came upon a break in the steep slope. A narrow little gully guided a babbling stream down into the loch. It cut through the hill, but the stream itself followed a shallower slope. It rose all the way to the top of the hill and he figured he could, with some difficulty, climb along its course to reach the summit.

It was a sweaty, muddy climb, full of near-falls and yanking on bunches of grasses to pull himself up. When he hauled himself over the top, he sprawled on the grass and lay there for a minute, before he looked around and got his bearings. 

The hill he’d been tracking sloped more gently down on its other side. Its top formed a gently rolling plateau of grasses and bracken. The stream apparently came from a spring right here, which Martin, after a moment, realized was odd -- a spring on top of a hill right next to a loch? But he saw only a small, shallow pool feeding the stream. Maybe Scotland’s groundwater followed its own rules. 

The weather was about to turn. He could see clouds massing in the east and, with the way the wind was blowing, he thought they’d be upon him soon. He just had to follow the ridge of this hill back towards the castle. It shouldn’t be too difficult, though it might be a good long walk. He hauled himself back up on his aching feet and headed off down the slope. 

The valley was narrow, but had another deer trail at its bottom, and was, at least, easier hiking than the forest had been. No menacing trees or strange silences, just windblown grasses and gorse. He meant to keep the hill to his right so that he wouldn’t get lost. But the valley twisted and turned strangely, veering to the left and then back, rising and falling, and soon Martin had lost all his sense of direction. He cursed himself; he should have stayed along the ridge of the hill so that he could see where he was going from up high, but by now, he wasn’t even quite sure of which hill he ought to climb. He picked one on his right side, but the slope was steeper than it had looked, and the earth crumbled out from under him and sent him tumbling back to the valley floor. 

Martin very nearly swore. First the forest, now this. He picked himself up and kept following the path.

The clouds swept in and bit by bit, shrouded the valley in mist. Soon he could barely see more than ten feet in front of him. He considered stopping and waiting in the hopes the mist would pass, but the chill settling in made him want to keep moving, and he was more than a little desperate now to get back to the castle. So he trudged on as the fog thickened. The air was heavy with water vapor. 

When at last he could scarcely see his outstretched hand in front of his face, Martin stopped. At this rate he’d fall and break something, and that would be just his luck today. He could just make out the shape of a large boulder nearby. He headed for it, with the idea of maybe sitting down for a while.

As he approached the boulder, he saw something was wrong with its shape. It leaned against the side of the hill, or seemed to -- there was a gap between boulder and hillside, but he couldn’t see grass on the other side. As he got closer, he realized there was darkness between the boulder and the hill. He would have thought it a shadow, except nothing cast shadows like that in heavy mist. 

It was a hole. No, not a hole. A door.

The doorway into the hillside, hidden neatly behind a boulder, stretched away into darkness. Its edges were made of stone and turf and it was rounded rather than sharply built, but it was a door nonetheless. Martin stood staring into it. Someone must have built this. Maybe there was someone in there right now.

“Hello?” he called.

Silence, and then…

...music rose from the shadows. 

Martin knew the tune. He couldn’t stop himself. It pulled at him like the moon pulled the sea, and though his fingers clutched at anything for purchase, to hold himself back, his feet walked him forward towards the door. He grabbed at the clods of grass around the opening but they ripped away, roots and all, in his hand. Whatever was in there with that awful and enthralling song, he did not want to find it out -- it didn’t belong here, he was awake, wasn’t he? -- did it matter? He fell through the doorway into darkness. In a moment, he knew somehow, his eyes would adjust and then he would see it all, and that would be the end.

Something grabbed the back of Martin’s jacket and yanked. 

He fell backward into the misty light of the outside world. The darkness receded from his eyes and the song fell away from his bones. The fall knocked the wind out of him, but even before he’d taken a breath he was wildly trying to get his feet under him, and he used the side of the boulder to haul himself upright. The darkness and the door stared back at him from the hollow hill. His feet were his own again, though the music still played, and now the music was dreadful and terrible. 

He didn’t turn to see what had pulled him out of the dark. He was too frightened even for that. All he could do was run down the valley. He drove forward recklessly, as hard as he’d driven in the forest and much faster without the trees and brush to block him. His breath was coming in ragged and harsh and he didn’t care, because the music was following him. It would bear down on him and when it caught him it would dance him back to the hill. 

At a twist in the trail, Martin’s foot caught in a hole. He pitched forward and hit the ground hard. A flare of pain wrenched through his ankle. He couldn’t run anymore. At last he turned and looked back up the trail, towards the music. 

The fog was thick behind him. It came at him in a cloud and swept down the trail. The music grew louder and louder. It would make him dance, injured ankle or not. The edge of the dense fog reached for him.

The melody stuttered just before it touched him. Something was wrong. Something cut through the song, a beat that wasn’t a drum. Hoofbeats in a three-part rhythm, battling against the beat of the musicians from under the hill. It was coming from down the trail, where Martin had been running to, and he turned once more and saw, powering through the fog, a great dark shape galloping his way. 

The horse from the loch emerged from the mist. It pulled to a stop and reared, mane and tail flying, ears pinned, and hooves flashing in the direction of the hollow hill. It screamed, and there was something high and lonely and ferocious in the sound. The dense fog almost seemed to recoil. The tune was broken and jangling now. And then it receded as quickly as it had come, and the horse leapt over Martin where he’d fallen on the trail and galloped uphill, towards the hill, chasing the song back from whence it had come.

The horse returned a minute later. Martin had managed to sit up and was facing it when it came down the trail. When it saw him looking back at it, it stopped, pricked its ears forward, and regarded him with an intensity that better fit an eagle than a horse. 

Martin found his voice. “Um, thank you,” he said. “You pulled me out of there, didn’t you?”

The horse didn’t so much as twitch.

“Are you a kelpie after all? Or am I dreaming again?”

No reply. 

“But in any case, thanks, for you know, saving my life.” It felt totally inadequate as a statement of gratitude, and yet, what an absurd situation. He was talking to a horse, or maybe something that wasn’t really a horse, in the middle of the Scottish countryside, after almost being lured into a hillside. If he wasn’t dreaming, then the entire countryside around here abounded with faeries, and they were just as dangerous as the darker books in the castle library said they were. 

Martin tried to stand and immediately gave up the attempt as his ankle roared with pain. He fell back down, bit back a curse, and looked back at the horse. 

“I’m really sorry to ask, but I can’t walk. I have to get back to Castle Magnus. Do you think I could…” he trailed off. What was he thinking, asking probably-a-kelpie for a ride? He remembered the passage on water horses in  _ Of the Waters and the Wild.  _ On the other hand, it had definitely just saved his life, and besides, what other choice did he have? He could only hope this particular kelpie meant him no harm.

The horse stepped forward. There was a palpable air of reluctance to it, as though it wished to make it clear that it would greatly have preferred not to be doing this. But even so it walked up to Martin, dark eyes clear and oddly soft, and lowered itself down to the ground. Martin, hardly daring to breathe, whispered, “Please don’t eat me,” grabbed its mane, and swung one leg over its back.

The horse hardly waited for him to get balanced before it lurched to its feet. Martin had to haul on its mane to stay on its back, doing so with a hasty apology. The horse didn’t appear to notice. It started a slow trot down the path.

A trot was normally quite a jarring, bouncy gait, but on this horse it felt smooth as silk. The mane was surprisingly soft and flowing under Martin’s hands, not like the usual stiff horsehair. The horse didn’t smell like a normal horse, either, instead smelling of lakewater and faintly of algae. Up close, he could see the gray hairs intermixed with the black on its coat and see the black tips of its seashell-curved ears. Its skin was cold against Martin’s own. This was definitely not a normal horse. 

The horse led him down the path at a gentle trot. When the way forked, it confidently chose its direction. Martin, who was hopelessly lost by this point, could only trust that it didn’t mean him harm. As they traveled, the valley continued its slow descent. The mist began to clear and the chill in the air to fade, until at last the sun broke through the clouds. At this, the horse shifted into a canter and Martin struggled to adjust his seat. He had little experience on horseback. But as with the trot, the horse’s canter was surprisingly comfortable and easy to ride. 

At last, they rounded a bend and the hill fell away, and Martin saw, with blessed relief, the towers of Castle Magnus in the distance. They’d come around the back of the castle from the far side of the hills. The horse, not appearing to tire in the slightest, cantered on as the ground leveled into the plain on which the castle stood. The sun glinted off the loch. It was once again a beautiful day. 

The horse circled around the castle on the far side from the loch. It kept a fair distance from the walls as it went. They made a broad semicircle around the castle until Martin and the horse were facing the gate. About thirty yards from the doors, on the greenway, the horse stopped. It turned its head to regard Martin with one eye and then, with a long-suffering sigh, began to fold its legs and lie down. Martin slid himself off its back and onto the greenway. Clearly, the horse wasn’t going to take him any closer.

“Thank you. Really. For everything. And for not eating me, I mean. Just, thanks.” 

The horse stood. It glanced up at the castle wall, then back down at Martin, and then it turned and began to race back towards the loch. It dipped below the bluff and was lost to Martin’s sight. 

A moment later, a shout came down from the walls. “Who’s there?”

“Basira? It’s Martin Blackwood.” He turned at the sound of the familiar voice to see Basira striding down the greenway towards him. 

“What happened?” she asked.

“I went for a hike and got myself injured,” he said. No need to bring the faery part into it just now. 

“Where did you go hiking?” asked Basira sharply.

“Around the loch, through the woods and the hills -- I don’t think I can walk…”

“So how did you get back here?” She’d reached his side but didn’t reach out a hand to help him up. She just watched him as though he might draw a knife on her at any moment.

“I met a horse. It, er, gave me a ride.”

Basira’s eyes widened briefly, but then she nodded. Something in his response seemed to satisfy her. “Let’s get you inside. I can patch up that leg for you.”

The ankle, fortunately, didn’t seem to be broken. Basira expertly braced the ankle and found a crutch in the guardroom for Martin to use. “Keep that elevated as much as possible,” she told him. 

She hadn’t asked any further questions about his hike, and Martin had been afraid to volunteer information in case she didn’t believe him or thought he had taken leave of his senses. He only thanked her for the brace and made his painstaking way down to his room for a change of clothes. By the time he’d taken off his tattered clothing -- with a noticeable tear in the back of his jacket where the horse had dragged him from the hill -- and cleaned up his many scrapes and scratches, it was time for dinner.

Sasha and Tim were already seated in the dining room when he entered. Sasha stood at once when she saw him. “Martin, are you all right? What happened?”

He came over to their table and gave a greatly abbreviated version of the day’s events. Tim and Sasha brought over his dinner of stewed beef and fresh bread and listened intently. He didn’t go into much detail, certainly not about the hollow hill or his dreams. Even so, he could tell Tim was finding it hard to believe.

“I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said at the end, “but that’s what happened.”

“Someone’s horse must have escaped,” said Tim. “A really well-trained escaped horse that’s been hanging out by the loch every day.”

“That’s probably right,” said Martin, who thought nothing of the sort. For the same reasons he’d been hesitant to share with Basira, he was finding it hard to talk about the day’s full events with Tim and Sasha. He didn’t want them to laugh at him. 

“Martin, these hills are really unsafe,” said Sasha. “If the road to town is this bad, just think what the hills are like.”

“Maybe that’s why people go missing,” Martin said. It probably was true, he realized as he spoke. Of course people went missing around here, in this place where the trees were hungry and the hills were hollow. Those two reporters in town would have a hard time finding the evidence of bandits they were looking for.

To change the subject, he asked Tim and Sasha about their day boating. He learned it had been quite pleasant, and from the way Tim was looking at Sasha the whole time, he’d probably been just as glad not to have Martin along. 

Mercifully, there was no music in Martin’s dreams that night. There were other things: trees with bloody wooden claws reaching down to him, a darkness under the earth and blacker than the space between stars, a mist that tried to crush him in its coils. But before any of these things could devour him, there was the sound of hoofbeats and lapping waves, and he knew, at least for a moment, that he was safe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe it folks? we've already gotten to see Martin ride Jon! (No, not like that, get your mind out of the gutter) ;)
> 
> As always, I incredibly, deeply, and truly appreciate comments.


	5. A Cup of Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One: The Water Horse, continued.
> 
> Martin frets, Jon commits crimes, and Elias is about as helpful as you'd expect.
> 
> CW: Martin uses some ableist language ("maybe I'm going insane") towards the end.

“I think we need to question Jon.”

Sasha had drawn Martin and Tim aside in the corridor after breakfast. As usual, Jon hadn’t made an appearance. 

“I thought we were just keeping an eye on him,” Martin said in confusion.

“Listen, I --” Sasha broke off for a moment as another staff member passed them, then kept on. “This morning there were more scorch marks on my office door.”

“What?” exclaimed Martin. “I didn’t hear any noises.”

“No noise this time,” Sasha replied. “But when I checked this morning, there they were. Smaller than last time, and right around the keyhole, but they were definitely not there last night.

“I want to know why this is happening and what it has to do with those weird sounds. I don’t think it’s either of you two and who else could possibly be interested in what’s in my office?”

“Have the scratching noises changed?” asked Tim.

“They’re just the same: on and off as always. I don’t know who’s doing it, but there’s one obvious person around who we haven’t gotten anything from. It’s time we find out what’s going on with him.”

“What are you going to do, corner him? What if he doesn’t want to talk about it?”

“Then I’ll think of something. Come on.” She led them downstairs and towards the library.

Martin fidgeted and drummed his fingers on his crutch as he laboriously descended the stairs. Asking Jon about the office was bound to be awkward at best, and at worst, maybe turn into a row. He barely knew Jon and so couldn’t predict how he was likely to react, but from his behavior so far, it was unlikely he’d respond well to being asked whether he was attempting to break into Sasha’s office at night.

Martin had always hated conflict. He’d never been any good at confrontation and usually went out of his way to avoid it. He could only be grateful that Sasha would be asking the questions. 

Jon was sat in the library when they arrived. He’d pulled up a stool and was hunched over a copy of _The Complaynt of Scotland._ He didn’t even glance up as Sasha, Tim, and Martin entered the room. 

“Jon? Can we have a word?”

He looked up at last, though Martin noticed he didn’t quite meet Sasha’s eye. “Yes?”

“You’ve been here a few days now. How are you settling in?”

“Are you giving me a performance review? In front of them?” He waved a hand at Tim and Martin. Tim was stood not far behind Sasha, obviously watching the interview. Martin, unable to look away, had pressed himself into the far wall, and felt his stomach twist as Jon glanced over him. 

“Not a performance review. We’d do that in my office.” She put the tiniest possible stress on the final word, and in response -- Martin saw it, it was quick but definitely there -- Jon flinched. Just a little. But it was enough.

“So what is this?” asked Jon, recovering.

“Just a few questions. As I said, how are you settling in?” Sasha’s tone, initially friendly, distinctly hardened. 

“Fine.”

“Work going smoothly?”

“Yes.”

“Any problems come up?”

“As I said, my work has gone smoothly.”

“How are you finding your accommodations here?”

“Adequate.”

Tim sighed audibly from behind Sasha. “You going to give more than one word answers?”

“I did. Two questions ago. And just now.” Jon’s eyes were narrow and his voice was taut with anger and contempt. 

“Okay then,” said Sasha. “Have you noticed what’s been happening to my office door?”

“What do you mean?” The stony mask cracked a little. He sounded actually concerned. Guilty, maybe. Martin realized with a sinking feeling that this was about to get much worse. 

“Noises in the night. Blast marks on the door.”

“Oh, that. It’s very odd. I can’t help you with it, though. Do you have any idea who’s behind it?”

“I was hoping you might have seen something. We’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Come on,” said Tim. “You’ve got a terrible poker face. Come clean.” He stepped forward to stand beside Sasha. Martin, for his part, stayed glued to the wall.

“Whatever you think you’ve seen, I have nothing to tell you. I don’t know what’s going on with your office.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sasha replied.

“That’s too bad.”

“Fine. Answer this, then: why are you here?”

“Because Lord Bouchard wanted me here.”

“Why did he want you here?”

“He thought I could help you.”

“How, exactly?”

“You’ll have to ask him, I’m afraid.”

Tim exploded, “That’s it. I can’t work with him, I don’t trust him, and I have no idea what he’s doing here because he’s so goddamn evasive. Tell us the truth or get the fuck out of here.”

Jon let out a bark of laughter. It was the first time Martin had seen anything like it from him, yet there seemed to be no true joy in it. “Mr. Stoker, I haven’t lied to you during this entire interrogation. And I am trying to help you all as much as I can.” His eyes flicked inexplicably to Martin as he said this last. 

Tim looked about to make an angry reply, but Sasha held up a hand and cut him off. “I’m going to talk to Lord Bouchard.”

“Perfect,” said Jon. “Go ahead.”

“One last question.” Tim stepped forward. “Why are you such an asshole?”

“I’m not exactly a people person. My apologies.” Jon glared daggers right back at him. 

“Come on, Martin and Tim.” Sasha turned to leave. “Jon, don’t burn the place down while we’re gone.”

“I’ll do my best.” Without further comment, Jon turned his attention back to the book he still had open in his lap. 

“He is actually the worst,” muttered Tim as soon as they were out of earshot. “He’s so full of shit.”

“I’m tired of not understanding what’s going on around here,” said Sasha. 

“You think Bouchard will actually answer our questions?”

“Probably not. But it’s worth a try. And from his tone, I don’t think Jon likes him.”

“Well, I guess he can’t be _that_ bad, then. Martin, do you need help?”

Martin had been getting better at navigating the stairs with his crutch. His ankle still complained when he put weight on it, and it took him twice as long as normal, but he shook his head at Tim. “I’m okay, thanks.” 

Tim and Sasha continued debating as they climbed the winding stairs up to the highest floor and Lord Bouchard’s office. Martin trailed them anxiously. He’d been looking forward to the end of Jon’s questioning, but this was likely to be worse. But they were doing this as a team and he couldn’t abandon Tim and Sasha now.

At last, they stood outside Bouchard’s odd carved door. Martin was forcibly and unpleasantly reminded of his dream of the standing stones. Could Bouchard be involved with this somehow? If not, why have these patterns on his door? But the wood looked old -- older than Bouchard, definitely. He’d have had to inherit it. 

God, this was confusing. Martin was jumping at shadows, seeing prowling faeries in every corner. And he maybe wasn’t entirely wrong to do so. 

Sasha’s knock was loud enough to jolt him out of his thoughts. “My lord? A word?”

After a moment, Lord Bouchard’s voice came through, smooth and soft: “Come in.”

Sasha opened the door. Bouchard was sitting at his desk, writing in a ledger. He finished his sentence and turned the page as the three librarians entered. “Ms. James, Mr. Stoker, Mr. Blackwood. Welcome. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sasha paused as if to consider her opening. “Lord Bouchard, you brought in Jon recently, and he’s been… struggling to adjust.” As she spoke, Martin realized suddenly that he’d never heard Jon’s surname. He had no idea what it was. 

“I’m so sorry to hear that Jon’s been having difficulties fitting in,” said Bouchard. “But surely this is an issue you should discuss with him, is it not?”

Sasha went on gamely. “We tried to ask him what was going on with him, but he said we’d have to take it up with you. So here we are.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m not sure how much I can help you, unfortunately. There’s not much more to say. I brought Jon in because it seemed as though you all needed the help. It became clear there were simply too many documents to wade through. And as it stands, I don’t see how I can intervene.”

“Can you at least have a word with him about being civil to his colleagues?”

“I’m surprised at you, Sasha. This is exactly the sort of thing a Head Librarian is supposed to handle. I rather think this is _your_ responsibility.”

Even standing behind Tim, Martin could tell he was fighting back the urge to swear at their employer. Sasha, more professional, nodded her head and spoke before Tim could get them all in trouble. “All right then. Sorry to disturb you, my lord.”

Bouchard waved at the door. “Do come talk to me again if you have any concerns that I actually _can_ help you with.”

Tim at least had the grace to hold back his anger until they reached the safety of the stairs, on the other side of a closed door from the lord’s office. “No wonder he foisted Jon on us. The two of them are practically made for each other,” he spat.

“That wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped,” Sasha said.

“What do we do now?” Martin piped up.

“I doubt we’ll get much more from Jon right now,” she told them. “Best to back off for now and just keep an eye on him.”

Martin finally let himself breathe out in relief. No more shouting or cross-examinations or getting a dressing-down from Lord Bouchard. At least, not for a while. He was happy to watch and wait for now. 

They returned to the library to find Jon still absorbed in _The Complaynt of Scotland._ This time, he at least spared them a glance as they entered the room.

“How did it go with our liege lord?” 

“You always suck up to him like that?” Tim snapped.

“That well?”

“You can wipe that smirk off your face right now. We might have to work together but that damn well doesn’t mean I like you or trust you. You’re hiding something and you’re an ass on top of it.”

“All right then,” said Jon flatly. He looked pointedly back at his book.

“What’s so fascinating in that book that you can’t look away from it for five seconds?” Tim marched across the room and leaned over Jon, who sat unmoving on his stool. “ _The Ballad of Tam Lin?”_

“It’s an interesting story.”

“You two.” Sasha’s voice cut through the room. “Tim, take a break, please. Have a walk around the battlements, then come back and join us. Jon, put that down and get some actual work done. Start with the Russian translations. Martin, come help me in my office.”

It turned out that Sasha just wanted help shifting files around near her desk. It was probably more of a one-person job, but Martin sensed that she didn’t want to be alone with the scratching, scraping noises from her floor. He couldn’t blame her; they were creepy enough even with two of them there. 

As he sorted through stacks of papers, he wondered if there was any way to smooth things over between the librarians. It couldn’t be easy for Jon, all alone here with no close friends, and now with all of them suspicious of him. Not that that excused his behavior, exactly, but at least it was understandable that he’d get defensive. Maybe they needed a peace offering.

It struck him then. “It’s delivery day!”

Sasha looked up from the other side of the cramped room. “You hoping for that tea to arrive?”

He was. He really, really was. The castle tea hadn’t improved over the last couple of weeks and he was desperately craving something decent to drink. And it might just be the olive branch he’d been looking for. Only a complete monster would turn down a good cup of tea, and he wasn’t ready yet to consign Jon to the “complete monster” category just yet. 

So it was that after lunch (a smoother affair than expected as he and Sasha managed to calm Tim from stormy to merely sniping and sarcastic), Martin entered the castle courtyard just as Breekon and Hope’s wagon pulled through the gates. He saw Georgie and Melanie perched on the back as before and waved to them. Internally, he felt an acute pang of guilt -- he’d likely discovered the cause of the mysterious disappearances and he didn’t think he could tell them, despite his promises. 

He was the first to reach the courtyard of the staff waiting for deliveries, and so for the first time, he faced Breekon and Hope without a queue ahead of him. As Breekon (or Hope) settled into place by the back of the wagon, Martin felt his limping steps slow. Just looking at the men made him want to turn around and stick with Tim and Sasha by the walls. 

This is for a good cause, he told himself. Think of the tea. Squaring his shoulders, he made himself look Hope (or Breekon) in the eye. His voice came out higher than he’d wanted, but he still manage to clearly say, “Has my tea arrived yet?”

The deliveryman reached a meaty fist into one of the nearest sacks and drew out a small wooden box. “Pound of tea.” He held it out to Martin, who took it from him while managing not to actually touch those disquieting hands. 

“Thank you,” said Martin, who had been raised to be polite. Because he had been so raised, he did not quite bolt away from the wagon but only walked off briskly. 

“Success!” Sasha gave him a thumbs-up as he returned to where she and Tim were waiting by the wall. Martin flashed a smile in return. 

“The famous tea at last,” Tim remarked. “I hope it’s decent. They say you never can tell with these guys.”

“It can’t be worse than what they make here.” Martin clutched the box and allowed himself to feel just a little triumphant. 

“Hello Martin! What happened to your leg?”

The three of them turned to see Melanie and Georgie circling the small crowd and heading their way. As before, both reporters had their notebooks out. Martin noticed most of the castle staff subtly giving them a wide berth, not looking directly at them as they passed. 

“Hi Melanie. Hi Georgie. I had a fall while hiking, but I’m all right.” he replied. 

Sasha held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Sasha. Martin told me about you two and your investigation.” A round of introductions was swiftly made and sympathy expressed for Martin’s injury, then Sasha continued, “I think we’d like to help however we can using the library’s resources.”

“That’s great,” said Melaine. “What kinds of documents do you have? And do you think you can get us access?”

Sasha frowned. “We mostly have records of folklore, local and from around the world, but I’m sure there’s something that might be able to help you. We have quite a few archival copies of local correspondence, parish records, journals of former residents over the years. The trouble would be getting you into the library. Lord Bouchard’s policy is that anyone wanting to use the library’s resources has to have a letter of introduction from an academic institution.”

“We could get one from _Doyles’,”_ said Georgie doubtfully. “Though that’s not exactly academia.”

“Worth a try.” Sasha sighed. “The library really should be a resource available to everyone. If the lord doesn’t accept your letter, we can try digging through some things ourselves. It’d be better than nothing.”

“Anything you can get us would help.” Georgie glanced around, then dropped her voice and stepped closer. “Truth is, the locals around here have been stonewalling us. They don’t like to talk about it.”

“We reckon there’s someone they’re afraid of, someone who’s threatening them,” Melanie put in. “A person in power who doesn’t want too much outside attention. That, or they’re just country folk who don’t trust a couple of journalists from the city.”

“That last option doesn’t make for nearly as good a story” said Tim wryly. 

Martin’s guilt sharpened. He’d done a fair amount of reading now about faeries and one common thread seemed to be that they didn’t like people talking about them to outsiders. If the locals did know about what haunted their hills, they definitely wouldn’t disclose it to Melanie and Georgie. They were almost right; there were powerful entities around here that liked to have their secrets kept. He looked down at his scuffed shoes, muddy beyond hope of fully cleaning after his excursion into the hills, and said nothing.

“We’ll write to _Doyles’_ and ask for a letter,” Melanie continued. “We’ll bring it by on one of these delivery days.”

“How did you come to an arrangement with Breekon and Hope?” Sasha inquired. “They don’t seem like the most… obliging types.” As she said this, one of the deliverymen was scowling at a staff member who was, from the loud protestations, attempting to pay for something on credit. 

“We pay them,” Georgie told her. “They’re obliging enough with coin in their pockets.”

Martin had to wonder if Breekon and Hope unsettled anyone else the way they did him, but he didn’t quite dare ask. Certainly Melanie and Georgie didn’t seem particularly bothered, but maybe they were just good at hiding it. 

“Where do they live?” he asked by way of finding out more.

“Dunno,” Melanie replied. “Their wagon just shows up in town. I asked, but like Sasha said, they’re not really forthcoming, and we’re not paying them for information, just transport.”

“Maybe we can meet you in town instead,” said Martin, reluctant to have them keep riding with Breekon and Hope. “I tried to come on my day off but couldn’t arrange it. Next time, it should work out.”

“We don’t want to put you to any trouble,” said Melanie. 

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all.”

“We can do both,” Sasha decided. “No harm in keeping in contact. I’ll come by the village on my next day off, if we can get our escort settled.”

“Escort?” Georgie and Melanie both reached for their notebooks, evidently sensing a story in the offing. 

“That’s part of why I’m so curious about why people go missing,” Sasha explained. “We’re told we can’t go to the village without an escort from a member of the castle guard, on account of the road being dangerous.”

Georgie added, “The folks in the village talk about the road being dangerous too. They just never tell you _why_ it’s dangerous.”

“Afraid we don’t have any better insights for you, but maybe the library will help.”

By now, Breekon and Hope were taking their last orders and starting to pack up. Melanie noticed, tapped Georgie on the shoulder, and nodded in the direction of the wagons. “Our own escort’s leaving.” She turned back to the librarians. “See you all soon.”

The reporters climbed back on the wagon after Breekon and Hope finished stowing their wares. The deliverymen climbed into the driver’s box side-by-side and began to drive out of the courtyard. Martin gave Melanie and Georgie a last wave as the wagon turned to leave through the gate.

Both journalists returned his wave. Georgie, though, scanning the courtyard as they left, glanced away to the far wall surrounding the courtyard, then seemed to do a double-take. Her face went blank with shock. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. She leaned forward as if considering whether to jump off the cart. Then the wagon passed through the gate and the guards closed in behind as it went, and Martin couldn’t see her any longer. 

Martin looked to the far wall. A few staff members were stood there, but he knew instantly who Georgie had been staring at, someone whose expression mirrored the one she’d had before she passed the gate. Jon was frozen on the wall, gaping at the gate. 

“Oh my god,” Martin heard himself say before he realized he was speaking aloud. But Tim and Sasha, moving far faster than he could, had already turned to go back inside and were talking excitedly about how Melanie and Georgie might be able to help them uncover the strangenesses of the region and maybe even Castle Magnus itself. By the time Martin looked back at the wall, Jon had gone. 

The box, when he opened it, smelled promising. The leaves looked smooth, and when he ran his fingers through them, they had a decent weight to them. Miraculously, Breekon and Hope had delivered what appeared to be decent tea. 

“What do you think?” asked Sasha at his side.

“There’s only one way to know for certain.”

Martin took his time. His first proper cup of tea in weeks deserved some patience. He dug up a decent-looking teapot and steeped the leaves patiently once the water boiled, swirling at key moments to ensure proper development of flavors. While he waited, he found a tray, a small jug of milk, and a few sugar cubes that he added to a bowl, along with four chipped but serviceable teacups. He loaded it all on the tray, which Sasha carefully carried down the winding stairs to the library.

Tim was sat in one corner of the main room. Jon had placed himself as far to the opposite corner as possible and even turned his back. From the door, Martin could see he was still reading through _The Complaynt of Scotland._

“Hi everyone,” said Martin as brightly as he could. “I made tea.”

Tim came over at once. Martin balanced the tray on a stool and began pouring tea. 

“You didn’t put milk in already?” asked Tim, mock-appalled.

“No, because I’m not a _barbarian.”_

“I can’t believe you claim to know how to make tea.”

“Next time, when you make it, you can put the milk in first.” He called out hopefully to Jon. “Would you like some tea?”

Jon stood up slowly. He closed his book after marking his place with a ribbon and came over. Martin poured him a cup. “Milk or sugar?”

Jon reached out for the tea. He picked up a cup and raised it to his lips. Then his face violently twitched. His hand seized; the teacup fell and shattered on the floor.

“What’s wr--” 

Martin didn’t have the chance to finish his sentence. Jon reached out and knocked the tray from the stool. The other cups of tea, along with the pot, spilled to the flagstones and smashed. 

“What?” Martin cried out.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“What did you do that for--”

_“Where’s the rest of it?”_

“In the kitchen,” said Martin, startled into responding, still struggling to process the tea and ceramic sharps all spattered and smashed. “But what--”

Jon was already rushing for the door. Then he was gone without another word. His racing footsteps receded down the hall and up the stairs. 

“What the fuck?” Tim exclaimed. 

“Why would he--”

“Come on!” Tim lunged for the door. “Follow him! I’ll go on ahead, Martin; you follow when you can!” He charged off through the door after Jon. Sasha stayed back and helped Martin climb the stairs more quickly than he would have managed on his own.

By the time they reached the kitchen, however, Jon was holding the box upside-down over a fire, in front of a furious Tim. He shook it and a few last leaves drifted down into the flames. A couple of startled kitchen staff members jumped as the rest of the librarians barged through the door. 

“Jon, what are you doing?” demanded Sasha. 

Jon dropped the wooden box into the flames. “Saving you all, though you wouldn’t know it. Where did you get that stuff?”

“That’s my tea,” said Martin softly. 

“Where did you get it?” repeated Jon. 

“Breekon and Hope, but why--”

“It was poisoned,” said Jon flatly.

“It was _what?_ How could you possibly know that --”

“It reeked.”

“I didn’t smell anything!”

“You wouldn’t. But I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

Martin had no idea how to follow this up. He felt utterly out of his depth with this entire situation: strange castles, inexplicable tea-stealing colleagues, deadly faeries, strange dreams. He was starting to wonder if his life would just go on making less and less sense from now on, if this was just how things were going to be. 

In the silence, Tim said, “You know what? You’re just as weird as I thought you were. Stay away from Martin and his tea.”

“As long as you don’t order anything else from Breekon and Hope, I will.”

“Take a break, Jon,” Sasha said. “Don’t come back to the library today. We’ll see you tomorrow. Think about whether you want to keep working with us, and we’ll do the same for you.”

“Fine.” Jon’s tone was perfectly icy. He turned on his heel and marched past the astonished kitchen staff and out the door. 

“We can’t work with him,” said Tim. “At least, I can’t. It’s up to you, Sash, you’re the boss, but that’s how I feel.”

“He certainly isn’t making it easy.” Sasha had led the three of them back to the library and they were having an emergency team meeting, minus Jon. “How do you feel, Martin?”

“Confused.” The understatement of the century. Everything was too confusing right now and Jon was a piece of it. 

“You’re the one whose tea he dumped for no actual reason. Do you think you can continue to work with him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Could we even get rid of him if we wanted to?”

“I have no idea.” Sasha put a hand to her temple. “I’ve got a headache. Let’s skip out early today, all of us. I think we all need it. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Martin.

Tim said, “Hold on. I think we should put a watch on your office door tonight. We can take shifts.”

“That’s a good idea,” Sasha said. “Martin, would you be willing to help us? That way we could take shorter watches, get more sleep. But no pressure if you don’t want to. You need your rest.”

“No, I’ll help,” said Martin quickly. He had no idea what he’d do if some mysterious arsonist showed up in the night and tried to set fire to Sasha’s office door, but he wanted to help out his friends, and that was more important. Probably he’d just scream and bang on their doors and hope that didn’t make the arsonist mad. 

They arranged for Tim to take the first watch, Sasha to take the second, and Martin to take the third. To pass the time before dinner now that work was cancelled, Martin decided to head down to the water. Maybe his kelpie friend would be there.

God, what had his life become, that the idea of running into a kelpie by the loch would make for a pleasant afternoon outing? He fetched a broom from a nearby closet and began to sweep the ceramic shards from the library floor. 

The afternoon was drizzly and dark, but Martin went out regardless. He couldn’t talk to Tim or Sasha about his dreams or the faeries in the hills. The only one he could talk to was the horse, and even if it couldn’t talk back, he figured it would be better than holding this all to himself. He could only hope the horse would be there, even though dawn was long past. He ignored his aching ankle and dragged himself out the gate and towards the lake. 

He was in luck. As he followed the trail down the bluff, he saw the horse stood in the shallows near the shore. It was pawing at the water when he first saw it. Before, when he’d come across it here, it had always seemed relatively calm, at least until Martin approached. Now, it looked restless, even frustrated. 

The horse didn’t notice Martin until he’d nearly finished his halting climb down the bluff. When at last its ears twitched and it snapped its head up to stare at him, he held up a hand in greeting.

“Sorry to bother you. And thanks again for saving me yesterday. I just… I’m glad you’re here, okay? I need someone to talk to. Would you… would you mind staying for a bit? Please?”

The horse stood perfectly still. Martin lowered himself onto a nearby rock and took a seat.

“Thanks. I suppose… God, where do I begin? This place is awful in a lot of ways. Apparently, faeries are real and I can’t tell anyone because they’ll think I’m insane. Maybe I _am_ insane. But I don’t have a choice either way, so even if I’m delusional I have to keep going like this.

“There’s a whole hidden dangerous world out there and it wants me for some reason. I keep having dreams about it. I thought they were just dreams, but now… I don’t know. I don’t think they _are_ just dreams. What could they possibly want with me?

“Something’s trying to get into my boss’ office. From two directions, actually: something outside that tries to burn the door down in the night, and something below that sounds like it’s digging its way up through the floor. And I think my colleague, Jon, knows more than he’s letting on. We all do. He’s a strange one, not very friendly, downright rude, in fact. We tried to talk to him today and he ended up just talking in circles. Then he burned all my tea. He said it was poisoned but it seemed fine to me. I’ve just got no idea what’s going on with him.”

The horse shifted its weight as though uncomfortable.

“And that’s another thing! I’m not sure he was entirely wrong, either, because the men I got the tea from, Breekon and Hope -- I’ve not mentioned this to the others, but I feel really awful whenever I see them. They make me feel like running away and hiding until they’re gone. Maybe Jon knew something about it. Maybe Breekon and Hope are a pair of faeries who sell deadly tea, and he was just protecting me. But if that’s true…

“I don’t know. I think it’s all connected somehow, but there’s something I’m missing. I should quit, but I can’t. Truth is, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

At last, the words stopped coming. Martin put his face in his hands. He sat still as it all washed over him, all the pain and fear and uncertainty. Time passed, his jacket soaked through, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Something soft brushed against his shoulder.

Martin looked up. The horse stood in front of him, eyes gentle. It nudged his shoulder again with its muzzle, a bit awkwardly, but the intent was plain. Martin reached up, halfway holding his breath, and the horse held still as he stroked its jaw and forehead. The smell of lakewater and algae rolled over him. He traced the little whorl of hair in the center of that small, jagged gray star. Its skin was cool and soft. 

“Thank you,” Martin whispered. They stayed there like that, him and the water horse, as the sky darkened and the wind sang over the loch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Softness detected. Security alerted.


	6. Revenant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One: The Water Horse, continued
> 
> Georgie and Melanie come looking for answers and Martin does some investigating of his own. 
> 
> This one is slightly shorter than usual but there is Plot aplenty!

Martin paid for spending the day running around the castle. When Sasha knocked on his door to signal a change of watch, he’d only gotten patchy sleep through the pain in his ankle and the fear of hearing that music again in his dreams. Still, he threw on a shirt, grabbed his crutch, and hauled himself to the door. He opened his mouth to ask her if anything odd had happened on her watch, but she cut him off in alarm.

“God, Martin, you look awful.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not something you should apologize for. In fact, I’m the one who ought to apologize to you for waking you up. Get back to bed.”

“I’m taking watch.”

“No, you’re not, not in that state. You can take watch tomorrow.”

“I’m fine, Sasha, I’ll be okay…”

“Martin, as your boss, I am telling you to go back to sleep.”

“What about the door?”

“Don’t worry about that. Just get some sleep. In fact, take the morning off. I don’t want to see you before lunchtime. All right?”

Martin accepted defeat. “All right. Good night, Sasha.”

“Good night.”

Martin kept his promise to Sasha. He slept in as best he could, and luckily didn’t dream of music or doors in hillsides. He missed breakfast and only made it to the dining room after the lunch bell sounded. 

Sasha and Tim had beaten him there and left a place for him at the table. Sasha helped him carry his glass, and, as they tucked into their lunches, gave an update from the previous night.

“All quiet in the hallway. I stayed out there until morning and didn’t see or hear anything.”

Martin looked down a little guiltily. 

“We can’t keep doing this every night. There aren’t enough of us and we’ll wear ourselves out. We have to think of a different plan.”

“I think we should keep after Jon,” said Tim. “He’s definitely hiding something.”

“How do you propose we do that? Tie him up? We can’t _make_ him tell us anything and it’s clear Bouchard’s not going to intervene.”

“Did he come into work today?” Martin asked.

“He showed up this morning, but I told him to take another day off. I’m not sure how long I can keep him away, though.”

It was probably for the best, Martin thought. At least for now. 

He was seated facing the window, back to the door, and so when he saw Tim look up in confusion, he had to twist around to see what he was looking at. It was Melanie and Georgie, stood in the door to the small dining room, accompanied by a somewhat nervous-looking Rosie. The few other staff members in the room were all staring at the newcomers in shock, as though they’d never seen outsiders under the castle’s roof.

Sasha stood and gave them a smile. Georgie returned it, and she and Melanie wove through the tables towards them. 

“What are you doing here?” asked Sasha. 

“Looking for someone,” Georgie said. She and Melanie pulled chairs from nearby tables and squeezed in to sit with them. “Rosie says he works with you in the library from the description I gave. Do you know someone called Jonathan Sims?”

“That’s his second name?” exclaimed Tim. “How do you know him?”

Georgie gripped the table and seemed to steady herself. Martin noticed Melanie put a hand on her knee. 

“He -- we -- we were students together at Oxford,” Georgie explained. “We were friends. Then we drifted apart, I lost track of him, and well, a couple of years ago…” She dropped her voice slightly and Martin found himself leaning in. “...I saw a notice printed in the paper that he’d disappeared while on holiday in this region.

“I was working as a journalist with Melanie by then and that’s what initially got us interested in disappearances in this region. It was sad and strange and, when you find out something like that happened to someone you knew, someone you cared about… I wanted to figure out what’s going on up here. For Jon, and for everyone who’s gone missing.

“But then yesterday I _saw_ him, here, up on the walls of this castle, and Rosie says he’s working with you lot. Everyone thinks he’s _dead_ down south. Not that he ever had much family or that many friends, but we all thought he’d _died,_ and now I come up here and he’s… I don’t know.”

Tim had been staring open-mouthed during this entire revelation. Sasha’s eyes were wide and Martin found his heart beating hard. 

“You mean he’s a missing person? How long did you say?” Sasha demanded.

“A little over two years.”

“Oh my god,” said Tim, sinking back in his chair. 

“Has he told you anything?” Georgie asked.

“Basically nothing,” Tim replied. “We tried to ask him about himself yesterday but he was totally evasive. And he’s really…” He stopped, seeming to reconsider his choice of words. “He’s a bit odd. He threw some of Martin’s tea on the ground and burned the rest, said it was poisoned.”

“He’s always been kind of strange,” Georgie admitted, “but burning tea doesn’t sound like his style.”

“We didn’t even know his second name.”

“That’s really weird. Do you think we could talk to him?”

“I’m not sure where he is,” said Sasha, “but we can go looking for him. I told him not to come to work today, but he’s got to be around somewhere. We’re taking you down to the library. If Lord Bouchard gets angry at me later, fine.”

“How did you get here?” Martin spoke up suddenly. The question had been bothering him ever since Georgie and Melanie appeared in the door. Had they come with Breekon and Hope, no matter that it wasn’t a delivery day? Had they walked? After his own experience walking in the hills, neither option sounded particularly safe.

“Hired a farmer in the village to bring us in his cart,” Melanie said. “We didn’t want to wait for the next delivery day; this is too important. Had to pay him double the usual rate. He said he didn’t like coming out here, but wouldn’t tell us why.”

Martin relaxed slightly. The farmer not liking the road was more confirmation that he was right not to trust this country. “How will you get back?”

“We were hoping to pay one of the castle guard to take us. Or we’ll just walk.”

“Talk to Basira,” Martin told her. “It’s not safe, walking around here.”

Sasha and Tim exchanged a long glance at this, but said nothing. Georgie only said, “All right, Martin. We’ll check with her.”

The climb downstairs was long and slow. The others stayed with Martin as he made his way down to the library. He was being more careful than he had been the previous day, not wanting to make the injury worse, but it meant that every step took him twice as long. He didn’t like making the others wait, and told them more than once to go on ahead and that he’d catch up with them, but every time Tim and Sasha insisted on going at Martin’s pace. 

At last they reached the bottom of the stairs. Jon was nowhere to be found in the library. Sasha helped Martin get set up with one of the comfier chairs and stool to rest his leg while the others went down the hall to check his room. They returned a few moments later, looking puzzled.

“You didn’t find him, then?” Martin said.

“More than that, his room hasn’t even been used,” Tim replied. “I looked in through the keyhole and everything’s covered in dust. He’s not been staying there.”

“Come to think of it, I never did see him enter or leave,” said Sasha. 

Melanie wondered, “Where else could he be?” 

The others quickly decided to split up and search the rest of the castle. Martin would stay here in the library, to rest his leg and keep an eye out for Jon if he came back. Martin, for his part, had no idea what to say to Jon if he did see him. _Who are you really? Why did you disappear two years ago? What do you know about faeries?_ He could scarcely imagine himself getting up the nerve to actually ask any of these questions, but something would have to give. Because he was increasingly certain that Jon must know something about the faeries in this place. The disappearance, the strange behavior, the tea -- it all fit with faeries playing some role.

The trouble was (or, one of the troubles, really) that Martin knew almost nothing about faeries. He knew they could play haunting and horrible songs from under hills and through dreams. He knew they could turn the woods and the fog against you. He even knew that sometimes, they could be kind, or at least one faery could be kind. He might not understand that kindness or where it came from, especially in a supposedly carnivorous water horse, but he, Martin Blackwood, knew kindness when he saw it. 

But he needed more information. So, when the others split off to search the castle, he dragged himself across the room to a small shelf where he’d been filing books that purported to give classifications and explanations of the faery world. _Of the Waters and the Wild_ was among them. He ran his fingers over its spine and could clearly picture the cover image of the kelpie. Still, he left it on the shelf for now. Instead, he pulled out a volume entitled _The Ways of Faery Folk,_ took a seat on a nearby stool, and began to read.

_Of Faërie, that strange and dangerous land on the far side of the wind, little is known and less spoken. Mortals who venture into Faërie seldom return, and never return unchanged._

Martin skipped past this entry. He wasn’t trying to go to fairyland, only protect himself from its inhabitants. He found a likely heading: “The Laws of Fey Folk.”

_The fey folk may don and doff shapes and appearances as easily as mortals might change their coats. Time and worlds mean little to them, and they do not age, neither do they die save by violence. Yet the fey live by laws as strict as those of any king; stricter, even, for law-breaking is not punished after the fact, but made impossible by their natures. They can no more contravene the commandments of their nature than can the sea escape the pull of the moon._

_Faeries are reluctant to reveal the nature of these strictures, especially to mortals, yet common lore and long experience have taught us at least something of them._

_The first and best known is this: that pure iron burns faery flesh, that they cannot touch it without pain, and the mere presence of iron is hard for them to bear. It weakens their glamours and arts. The wise traveler always carries iron upon their person when out in fey country._

_Another law, but one that may easily be misunderstood and bring mortals to grief, is that faeries may not speak an untruth. They may deceive by appearances and illusions, but not by words. Yet I hesitate to declare that they may not lie, for faeries are compelled neither to speak the whole truth, nor to answer the question put to them. They are masters of misdirection and misleading speech, and though they speak no untrue word, the listener may easily be led to believe whatever the faery desires. Do not allow this law to endow you with false confidence._

_The powers of names over the fey folk is well known to those versed in their lore. A faery’s true name, given aloud by the faery themself, is a thing of enormous power. By such names may they be bound and made to render service, at least for a time._

This was more useful. The bit about iron was nothing Martin hadn’t heard before in old wives’ tales, yet if it were really true, it could be a useful thing to know. He certainly wouldn’t be leaving the castle without an iron penny in his pocket. Or even better, a poker. 

The part about lying was more interesting. Masters of illusions and changes of shapes, and for some reason they couldn’t lie? But they could, it seemed, dance around the truth…

Of course.

If he, Martin, couldn’t lie and yet had to conceal something from people, he’d evade the questions. He’d answer only in short bursts, twist the meanings of words, point-blank refuse to speak if needed. In short, he’d do exactly what Jon had done yesterday. 

Jon, who’d gone missing two years ago. Jon, who’d turned up here under mysterious circumstances and refused to explain himself. Jon, who’d never told them his full name.

Jon, with dark hair streaked with gray. 

Forgetting his ankle, Martin lunged for _Of the Waters and the Wild._ He scanned through the pages until he found the kelpie’s entry. _It may appear in human guise if it chooses._

And there it was. He couldn’t have said why he was so certain about Jon being the kelpie, specifically. Maybe it had been his look yesterday when he’d said that, not only had he not lied during the entire interrogation, but that he’d been trying to help them all as much as he could, and looked straight at Martin when he said the latter part. Maybe it had been the horse’s sigh at carrying him, or its quick action when Martin was in danger in the hills, coupled with Jon’s haste to destroy the tea. 

He didn’t care about his ankle. He didn’t care about waiting for the others to return to the library. He only cared about getting up the stairs, across the courtyard, and down to the loch as fast as his legs and crutches could take him. 

The horse -- the kelpie -- was stood in his familiar place in the shallows when Martin made it down the bluff. For once, he seemed to be dozing. His head hung low and his eyes were shut. A soft wind under a gray sky pushed at the tips of his mane and tail.

Martin made his slow way down the beach. He got within twenty feet before the kelpie awoke. He came alert with a start, saw Martin, and gradually relaxed again, though he still had a ruffled and slightly irritated look. He trained his eyes and ears on Martin, head tilted slightly as if asking, _What is it now?_

Martin took a deep breath, then ploughed straight in. “Um. Are you Jon?”

The kelpie flinched, then went very still. A rim of white appeared around his dark eyes. 

“Are you, though? Because Georgie Barker, she says she knows you, and the way you, I mean the way Jon’s been acting, it all makes sense…”

The stillness stretched until Martin was just about ready to do _something,_ he couldn’t have said what, but anything to break the tension. But just as he opened his mouth again to say god-knows-what, he noticed a faint shimmer around the edges of the kelpie’s shape.

It was a small thing at first, like heat haze, or maybe more like ripples in a pond. It spread and strengthened until the kelpie’s whole shape wavered and danced, and then, faster than blinking, the horse was gone, and there was Jon, in his familiar rumpled shirt and vest, stood barefoot in the shallows. 

He was smiling. It was skewed and wry and faint, but it was definitely there, the first smile Martin had seen him wear. 

“Hello Martin.”

Martin struggled to find the words he wanted. He didn’t know how to describe what he was feeling, either: dumbfounded, afraid, vindicated? So he stood there on the rocky shore and stared at the man who had just been a horse. A kelpie with two faces, his colleague, vanished friend of Georgie’s, Jon. 

The smile faded from Jon’s face and he too seemed to be at a loss for words. When at last he broke the silence, it was with a blurted, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” asked Martin. 

“For the tea. And for not telling you. I wasn’t _allowed to.”_ He spoke the last two words like a curse.

“By Lord Bouchard?” Martin guessed. 

“Correct.”

Martin felt the ground sway under him a little. His ankle started to complain. Jon must have noticed some change in his face, and he stepped forward. “Can I, um, help you sit down?”

Martin found himself leaning on Jon’s shoulder as Jon guided him to a convenient small boulder by the shore. His hands were cool, like the skin of his horse shape, and he still smelled like lakewater. “How’s your leg?”

Martin was about to say, “Okay,” then changed his mind. “Not great.”

“I’m sorry about that, too. For not getting there earlier.”

“Did you follow me into the hills?”

“I saw you head into the forest. I couldn’t follow you in there, but once you came out the other side, I followed some way back, just in case something else tried anything.” Jon helped Martin settle on the rock. “Then, when the singers came for you, I knew I had to intervene.”

“If you hadn’t come, it’d be a lot worse than a sprained ankle.”

Jon didn’t acknowledge this. Instead, he sat down on the stony beach, hugging his knees to his chest. “Maybe. You never know with the singers. Anyway, you’ve guessed what I am, and that means I can give you answers, if you want them.”

“I honestly don’t know where to begin.”

“Do you want to know?” Jon’s eyes were bright and searching.

“Yes,” said Martin honestly. Then, “Maybe start at the beginning?”

“Okay,” said Jon. “Okay. I’ll tell you how I got here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be a flashback and will contain our very first POV switch! Three guesses whose POV it is!


	7. The Kelpie's Tale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One: The Water Horse, continued
> 
> Statement of Jonathan Sims regarding his death.
> 
> CW: drowning, blood and gore, body horror, (temporary) major character death, mind control, imprisonment/entrapment/loss of free will, dysmorphia, isolation, animal death, spiders

There was a spider in the garden and it wouldn’t go away.

It had spun a web towards the back of the little yard, in among some pots that his grandmother always meant to clean up and use for flowers. But she never did. They just sat there, gathering dust and making a home for small and subtle things, like the spider.

He had nightmares about it, most nights. He dreamt of its web, which in real life was small and drab, but by night became bright and hard as silver wire. The spider waited at the center of the web and its eyes were so dark that the moonlight sunk in and was lost forever. The spider didn’t move, but it sang in a voiceless way, and its web grew and grew, and when he turned to run, he saw it had encircled him, and no one could hear him or come to save him. 

He didn’t dare approach the spider by day. He stopped reading and playing in the garden, much to the annoyance of his grandmother, who would have liked to get him out from underfoot for a while. 

They moved out of that house not long after and went to the city, where there were no gardens, and after a while, the nightmares faded. But they were never entirely gone, and once a year he was sure to dream of the spider, waiting and watching at the center of its web for him to return. It knew he’d be back. It had all the time in the world.

Once, his grandmother had taken him to a place where she’d visited her own grandparents long ago. It was way up in Scotland, and on the journey he fussed and fidgeted because he didn’t like the books he’d packed, and his grandmother snapped at him to stop complaining, Jon, and give me five seconds of peace and quiet, for heaven’s sake. And he knew not to trifle with her when she was in this mood, so he had to content himself with staring out the windows at the world passing by.

But Scotland was better than he’d expected. He surprised himself by liking the long grasses and frowning clouds and old stones. Sometimes he couldn’t understand what the people were saying, especially out in the villages, but that was all right -- he frequently failed to pay attention even when people spoke with accents he was used to, so it really wasn’t anything new. His grandmother sent him outside to play and wander about and get into trouble, and he did so with less reluctance than usual, especially because there was no spider in the garden. He didn’t even  _ dream _ of spiders here, just odd music, and that he could cope with. 

“What do you  _ want,  _ Jon?” 

He looked over at Georgie, puzzled. Both of them were a few drinks in by now, perched along the canal out back of the pub. They’d already nearly fallen in a couple of times. He was feeling warm and light and relaxed, which was unusual. He thought he might be drunk. He wondered how he might be able to tell for certain.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you want? In life?”

This was a more profound question than he felt entirely equipped to answer. “I dunno,” he said at last. 

“Degree in literature… then what? Career in publishing? Journalism?”

“You’re the journalist, not me.”

“I’m asking the questions.”

The lantern-light reflected off the calm canal waters, together with the beaming of a near-full moon. Brilliance seemed to splash up at him from below. It was beautiful; how had he never noticed it before? He’d walked by this canal any number of times after dark and he’d never paid any mind to the lights in the water. He wanted to tell Georgie but he couldn’t find the words, so he said instead, “I really don’t know.”

“Okay,” said Georgie. “Do you want money? You want to be rich? Famous? Want to marry someone nice and have a bunch of kids?” She was laughing as she said it. Jon was terrible with children and they both knew it.

“Stop it, Georgie,” he managed to say. And she did. And they walked back together, slightly off-kilter, Jon grinning uncharacteristically, until they got back to their rooms.

Jon woke up the following morning to a headache and a knock at the door. He threw on a shirt and wrenched open the door. 

“What?” he snapped, his good humor gone.

The college footman with the letter was a professional and apparently used to waking hungover students on Sunday mornings, because he didn’t flinch. “Express post for you, sir. Arrived this morning.”

He mustered the grace to thank the footman before he closed the door and fetched a letter opener from his desk. He sliced open the letter and unfolded it. It was addressed to him, written in an unfamiliar hand, and the return address was a Bournemouth solicitor’s office. He didn’t even get past  _ Dear Sir  _ before his stomach sank.

Well then. It wasn’t a surprise. Her health had been failing for some time and he’d been more or less expecting this news, but seeing it laid out in black and white there on the page knocked the wind out of him. Wordlessly, he read through the rest of it.  _ Allow me to express my deepest condolences… all arrangements to be handled without delay… would Mr. Sims be in a position to return to Bournemouth at his earliest possible convenience?  _ And so on. 

He made a note with the registrar that he’d be taking a short leave of absence. The only other person he needed to inform was Georgie, by way of a short note on her door. By sunset, he was on a post-carriage headed south bound for Portsmouth, and his home town after that. 

The funeral was a quiet affair and not heavily attended. His grandmother had not been the most sociable of people -- indeed, it was a family trait. Jon dressed in black and listened to the prayers and hymns and even took communion. He and a few very distant relations and one or two friends of his grandmother’s stood in a circle around the grave as the casket was lowered into the earth and the priest talked about ashes and dust and resurrection. The ashes bit made sense, he thought. It was just the resurrection part he couldn’t accept.

Jon returned to Oxford. He met with Georgie, passed his exams, watched the lights in the canal after dark. He and Georgie fell out over something. It had seemed so important at the time, whatever it was. 

He graduated. Took a job in London, in publishing, as Georgie had guessed. It was dreary enough but it paid the bills. He kept to himself. It was easier that way. 

When, from time to time, he dreamt of spiders, or the cold earth, or lights under the water, he did his best not to remember his dreams, and mostly, he succeeded. 

In the end, there was no one major incident that set him off. It was just the grind of days upon days, and Jon had always been the type to throw himself into work with abandon, even work of the soul-crushing variety, but even he had his limits. And one day, he just ran into them. If one more coworker came up to him with an inane and insulting question, if his boss gave him that patronizing look one more time, if he had to read one more half-assed and inadequate submission, or lie through his teeth and say that, yes, Mr. Flood, your nephew’s writing style  _ does  _ have the sparkling literary merit expected of essays to be published in our collection… 

In short, he needed a break. He didn’t quit. It would have taken more than the slow drip of indignities that made up the modern workplace to make him actually quit. But he requested a few days off. His boss granted him that much, grudgingly, after he promised to work overtime when he came back. 

He hadn’t traveled much: Bournemouth, Oxford, and London were more or less the only places he really knew, and he had no desire to spend any more time in those places, so he decided to find the opposite of a city. The only place that sprang to mind was Scotland, where he’d once gone with his grandmother, and so he sat down one evening with an atlas and, at last, found the name of the village where they’d stayed. Hilltop Village. That’d do. 

He’d forgotten, or maybe never learned in the first place, that he was no good at idleness. A single day in the room above the pub in Hilltop Village, staring at cows and rain, and he was already just about to wear a hole in the floorboards from pacing. Why the hell had he thought this was a good idea? Some kind of misguided nostalgia. He should have known better; though his childhood hadn’t been awful, it hadn’t been anything worth revisiting either. 

Mostly, he sat in the corner of the pub and read one of the novels he’d brought. When he finished that within thirty-six hours of his arrival, he read the town’s newspaper, and when he had that practically memorized, he got truly desperate and actually considered striking up a conversation with some of the locals. But neither he nor they were any kind of conversationalist and he soon retreated back to his corner and his tea and whatever reading materials he could scavenge around the pub.

The situation deteriorated far enough that, on the third day when the rain finally let up for a few hours, he rushed through the door without even bothering to return to his room for a raincoat. He’d wanted to get out into the country, and damn it, that’s what he was going to do. He’d seen an article in the newspaper about some old debris, a cache of rusted-out swords and such from the old days, that had washed ashore at a local loch. The paper even gloated that an actual professor from the university was coming to take a look at them. Jon, starved for amusement, had allowed himself an internal chuckle at these provincial know-nothings, but now, he had nothing more interesting to do than to go and take a look. 

The loch, supposedly, was only about half an hour’s walk out of town. Jon didn’t want to talk to anyone at the pub, so he headed for the little post office instead and inquired of the postal clerk how he might get to the loch in question. 

“Apologies, sir, but I’m not sure,” said the clerk in a decidedly English accent. “I’m not from these parts. Only just got here.”

“That much is obvious,” said Jon dryly. “Who does know?”

“Ask at the pub?” offered the clerk hopefully.

Jon scowled and turned away. He was just about to head out the door when a voice hailed him from the other side of the room. It startled Jon, who had thought up until that moment that he and the clerk had been the only two people in the post office.

“Heading out to see the treasure?”

The speaker was a tall man, thin, with long blond hair. He gave Jon a wave and a smile.

“I’m Michael. Headed out that way myself. I could show you -- the path’s not easy to find.” He, too, was clearly not from these parts, with his soft, southern accent and what appeared to be a fairly expensive suit and tie.

“Are you from the university?” asked Jon. 

“Well spotted!” said Michael. “I’ve been sent ahead to do some reconnaissance, bring back a few preliminary findings.”

Jon sized him up. He certainly didn’t look like someone dressed to trek out to a loch, but after all, some university types were terribly impractical. He ought to know, having met more than a few. Jon hadn’t been looking for company on the walk, but at least a fellow academic might be more interesting to talk to than the locals. 

“When were you looking to head out?”

“Why, now is a perfect time!”

“Are you bringing any equipment?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that; I have everything I need.”

“Have a nice walk, gentlemen!” said the postal clerk. And so Jon and Michael set off towards the loch.

The rain, mercifully, held off as Jon and Michael tramped through the sodden grass. The path towards the loch quickly took them out of town, through a couple of sheep pastures, and over one of the hills that surrounded the village. Despite the mud, manure, and general damp, Michael didn’t seem the least bit concerned about his fine shoes and clothes. 

He chattered away about everything and nothing as they went. It seemed he shared Jon’s fairly low opinion of the entertainment afforded by the villagers, calling them rather dull. Back home, he confided, there was much more amusement to be had -- studies, parties, hunts, parades. 

“University life suit you, then?” asked Jon, in an attempt to be polite.

“I dare say,” said Michael. “I’ve always needed a more… stimulating environment, you know. But one can’t just stay in one’s home and wait for these kinds of opportunities. I mean, opportunities like the one at the loch. Finds like this don’t come along every day, and I find it’s best to seize them, even if it means leaving the comfort of my home.”

“Hmph,” said Jon. Michael was certainly talkative. He couldn’t decide if he liked him or not. 

At last, they crested the hill and below them, Jon saw a small lake, gray beneath the hanging clouds, but still framed by picturesque green hills and a stony shore. 

“The loch at the castle is much larger,” Michael told him. “You should really head over that way sometime, if you get the chance. It’s a longer walk from here, of course, but the castle is quite architecturally fascinating. Lots of history there.”

“You mean Castle Magnus?”

“Yes. You’ve never been?”

“No.”

“One day,” said Michael, and led him down the hill towards the shore. 

“So where are these artefacts? How do you keep the locals from running off with them?” asked Jon as they neared the shore. He didn’t see anything that look particularly like washed-up treasure as he scanned the beach.

“Well, the locals don’t like to come out this way. They’re a superstitious bunch. And as for the treasure -- oh, there’s my associate now!”

Another man stepped out from behind a boulder. Like Michael, he too was dressed in a suit, but his was ragged and damp, and his smile was wide and white and sharp. 

“You didn’t mention you were meeting colleagues here,” said Jon, turning to Michael in confusion. Or, more accurately, turning to face the spot on the beach where Michael should have been standing. His guide had vanished into thin air.

“Michael? Where did you --”

“Never mind,” interrupted Michael’s associate. He took a grinning step towards Jon. “We don’t need them.” 

Jon wanted to argue. He wanted to say that something suddenly felt wrong. He wanted to run. But the air went thick and close around him and his throat closed up, and he was caught in the man’s gaze and the brightness of his teeth. He was moving closer, confident, slow. He had all the time in the world, and Jon was caught, like in his dreams of the spider. 

The hunter came upon him, as he inexorably must, and by then he didn’t look much like a man at all, and his teeth dug in, and Jon felt himself starting to be dragged across the stony shore. He found his voice then and he screamed and thrashed in pain and terror, but the jaws of the beast were too strong, and one of its hooves smashed him across the face, and his vision swam. 

He tried hard to keep fighting, but the waters of the loch wrapped around him and closed over his head. When at last he could hold his breath no longer, iciness rushed into his lungs, and the teeth hardened their merciless grip, and he could do nothing but sink down into the darkness and the cold. 

Jon couldn’t have said how long he drifted through nothingness before something broke through. It wasn’t a light, exactly -- more the  _ idea _ of moonlight bouncing off calm waters, and he thought, for some reason, of the canal in Oxford and Georgie asking him  _ what do you  _ want, _ Jon?  _ in another life. With the not-light came the suggestion of the wind and an implication of music. He was still sinking down, into a place where not even the concepts of light and songs and open skies could follow, but just for a moment, they hung there, suspended just beyond his grasp.

He could have waited and let the nothing take him. He knew that. Or he could reach for the offer before him. 

It wasn’t a hard choice. He reached out, desperate, trying to catch at life, and for a sickening moment he missed (was he really reaching with his hands? or with something else?) and thought he would fall backwards and beyond the world forever. At last he made contact, at at once the idea of moonlight became the real thing, and the wind lifted him out of the dark and the music coiled around his heart, and for a moment, he thought he was safe.

The pain came right after that. It wasn’t like any pain he’d ever felt, not like a broken bone or muscle cramp or toothache, but a deep wrenching and uprooting at his core. It was like someone had gripped his heart and was ripping it out of his chest. He couldn’t scream but he tried his best, and when whatever-it-was had been torn away completely, he felt hollow and raw and empty, and nothing held him together except the moonlight and the music and the wind. 

The nothingness had gone, but he still drifted regardless. Time spun through him in wild loops, and so he couldn’t have said how long it was before he came back to the world. Bit by bit, piece by piece, he realized he was no longer drifting through some in-between place, but floating. There was water around him, and it was real.

Jon was so relieved to be back in an actual place and a physical form that it took him several breaths to realize that he  _ was  _ breathing. And he was underwater; he could feel the passage of water through his sinuses, but he wasn’t drowning. 

With attention to his breathing came attention to his body, and he sensed at once that something was wrong. In the same way that he could perceive the position of his outstretched hand with his eyes closed, he could tell at once that his limbs and head and everything were shaped badly, and when he opened his eyes, his field of vision was stretched at headache-inducing angles. For all that, he couldn’t see much, just a faint glimmer in one direction that he supposed must signify the surface. 

Jon heaved himself around and began straining toward the light. It was faster going than he feared, despite how it felt like flailing with hands and feet that were not his own. The current picked him up, seeming to follow his intention, and he broke the surface in a desperate burst. His nostrils flared into open air; it rushed into his lungs, which opened seamlessly, and he breathed in the scents of rain and wind and growing things. 

Below the surface, he paddled to keep his head above water, unable to let himself sink for fear that whatever had stopped him from drowning might have deserted him. With his strange, wide scope of vision, he saw the shore behind him, not fifty yards away. He had to reach it. If only he could get to the shore, maybe this nightmare would end. 

Once again, he made faster progress than he’d expected as the waters seemed to push him along. It was like he was a weathervane, only somehow he was directing the wind and not the other way around. He’d never been a strong swimmer, and he did something that was close to a dog paddle, his breath coming in odd snorts. The shore drew nearer and nearer, and it seemed like an eternity until he at last struck bottom.

It should have been a hand that touched the lakebed, but it wasn’t. He could feel it in the impact. What should have been fingers were solid and dull and fused, and he scrambled forward with a cry of horror that sounded alien in the rainy air. He stumbled and clawed his way onto the beach, instinct and fear propelling him in equal measure until he found himself on all fours on the shore. There was no more water to block his view, and he didn’t even need to turn his head now, with his new sight. He could see it all.

The body he saw wasn’t his. It was flanks and barrel and long legs and four hooves and a tail -- the shape of a horse, dark-coated and drenched in lakewater. He took a step and felt it move. Unfamiliar muscles shifted, his teeth clenched tight and flat in his mouth, mobile ears flicked back and forth almost involuntarily. A sodden mane draped over his eyes.

He panicked. It was, he would later reflect, pretty much forgivable under the circumstances. The physiology of panic is different in equine species than it is in humans, more attuned to sudden flight than shaking and shortness of breath, but there was nowhere to run from the thing that frightened him then. So he trembled where he stood and shut his eyes and told himself, forcefully, that he needed to wake up _ right now _ . 

The universe was cruel, and instead of him waking up, it only started raining harder.

Eventually, he made himself straighten up. He wrenched his eyes open. Standing on the shore wasn’t getting him anywhere. He needed to get back to the village. Maybe that was what he needed to wake up, or failing that, maybe he needed proper treatment for whatever had gone terribly wrong with his brain. Hilltop Village was hardly a hub of medical expertise, but it was better than nothing. 

He found walking easiest if he didn’t think too hard about it. If he focused on what his muscles were doing, he stumbled almost at once, but if he let his legs work as they wanted, his stride smoothened out. He aimed for the hill that Michael had led him down. 

Had Michael known this was going to happen? Was he part of the dream or the fantasy or illusion or whatever this was? 

Questions for another time, he told himself, and started up the hill. To his surprise he found it easier to trot. Walking up the steep slope strained his hind end muscles. 

At the top of the rise he paused and looked down over the valley to get his bearings. In the distance, he could see the small gray cluster of buildings that made up the village. He was just about to set off in that direction when something rustled in the grass to his right, making him flinch. He turned, ears and eyes both trained on the source of the noise. 

A small creature was making its way through the grass. It was brownish and furred and vaguely human-shaped, and was wearing a battered old hat. When it noticed Jon staring at it, it swept the hat off in a courtly bow. 

“Good tidings, master  _ each uisge.” _

“What?” Jon was startled into replying. The words came out clearly and in a voice he recognized as his own. He blinked several times, attempting to dispel the illusion of a small furry thing talking to him, but every time he opened his eyes, the creature remained.

It tut-tutted at him. “Who raised you, lad? The proper answer to ‘good tidings’ isn’t  _ what.” _

“Um. Good tidings?” 

“Better.”

“Excuse me, but what -- I mean who -- exactly are you?”

The creature puffed out its chest. “I have the most humble honor to be a hob, sir, and the stones call me Thistle if they’re feeling familiar. We woods fey are only as proud as we may be. What might be your name, if you would be so generous as to say?”

“Jonathan Sims,” said Jon, feeling so far out of his depth that he had no choice but to play along.

“Well then, good and fine.” The thing that called itself Thistle replaced its hat with a flourish. “And now we are friends, and as such, I ask you: are you new?”

“Maybe? I need to get back to Hilltop Village -- I’m not well…” What was he doing, explaining this to what was almost certainly a figment of his imagination?

“Greener than grass, that’s what you are. I’ll do you a favor, a freely-given gift, since you’ll be sorely needing it. You’ve stepped through the door now. You’re on the other side. Listen to the wind and the waters and mind your head and your heart and your name, most of all.” It gave a final quick bow, turned, and raced away through the grass at surprising speed. Jon called out after it, but it was gone. 

The dogs started barking as he approached the village. Not friendly or excited barks, but snarls, howls, sounds of warning. As he passed the first house on the village outskirts, nestled between sheep pastures, the sound picked up in intensity and viciousness, and then came the sound of sprinting feet through the grass. Three huge dogs were racing his way, closing the gap. Their teeth were bared as they came.

He wasn’t foolish enough to try to get past them. He ran, letting his legs do their work, heedless of direction. He ran and ran until the sound of the howling dogs was far behind him, and then he ran some more, but no matter how fast he flew over the grasses, it somehow wasn’t enough. He’d never been athletic or enjoyed running before, but now it felt like the only thing to do, and so he did. 

Finally, the flight drained out of him, and he slowed to a stop in the lee of a hill. He had no idea where he was, or even how long he’d been running. The sun had set and the moon was high behind the clouds. The rain had stopped, for now, and he could hear no sounds but wild ones. No humans lived near here. 

Exhaustion overtook him with little warning. He wanted this day to be over. He wanted to wake up back in his tiny rented room above the pub, or even back in London. He slowly and haltingly figured out how to fold his legs just so and lie down in the shadow of the hill. His head rested on the grass and he slept. 

There were spiderwebs and dark water and grinning strangers in his dreams. Beyond and above it, that wild music, which he now understood to spiral through the webs and the lochs and now, his own bones, in the hollow place where his death should have been.

Jon awoke to the sound of someone calling his name.

He wasn’t back in his own bed or even his own shape. He was right where he’d been, in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, but somehow that didn’t seem so important just now. Not when his name called to him. 

He stood, shook the morning dew off his coat, and swiveled his ears back and forth, trying to pin down the sound. There it was -- a little to the east. Not far. He couldn’t see the speaker, but all he had to do was to follow the sound. 

He ran, not in blind flight as he had the previous night, but with excitement. He’d catch up to his name any moment now. Just over the next rise, across the next stream. He could hear it trembling on the air. It pulled him onwards, across a broad plain, its far end bordered by hills and a loch and a crumbling old castle. He paid none of these any mind. All he cared to listen to was the voice that drew him on.

He raced around the castle. In the shadow of the walls, between a tall bluff and the shore of the lake, he found the speaker.

The one who had his name was tall and thin. He was dressed well, but not flashily, and he was, for all Jon could tell, human. Beside him were two women: one who seemed likewise human and another who somehow felt like something different. Jon, though, wasn’t interested in either of them. He only had eyes for the speaker. 

“Jonathan Sims,” said the speaker again, and Jon heard it aloud this time, not just in his bones. It sent a weird shiver through him. He froze about ten yards from the people on the beach and came back to himself with a jolt. What was he doing here? When these people looked at him, what did they see?

“Thank you for coming,” the speaker went on. “Allow me to introduce my associates, Basira and Daisy.” Neither woman moved. Jon considered whether he ought to try to speak. Part of him, for some reason, wanted very much to run. 

“I am sure you must be confused. Don’t fret. You’re actually quite lucky. Do you know how few victims of the  _ each uisge  _ become fey in turn? It can’t be more than once a century or so. If I could predict how it came to pass… well. I’d be much better off than I am.”

Jon tried to say,  _ what do you mean?  _ but the words wouldn’t come this time. He’d talked to the furry thing on the hill near the village with no difficulty. This time, though, his tongue and teeth betrayed him, and he was silent.

“I will explain everything in due course. First,  _ hold still.” _ The last sounded like an order, and felt like one too: it spread through him and made him feel thin and weak and hollow, and he couldn’t move as the man who’d spoken his name approached. He reeked of iron so badly it stung the air, and as he came, he drew something out of his pocket. 

“You see,” he said as he unfolded the thing, “names are slippery things, even for the fey. Especially for those who used to be mortal. They only keep their hold so long. So think of this as insurance.” 

Something of cold leather and metal pressed against Jon’s cheek. It fell over his forehead. A band encircled his chin. 

“Put a bridle on a kelpie,” the man said, “and you’ve bound him properly. Admittedly, this is more of a halter than a bridle, but it will do quite nicely, I believe.”

He stepped away and looked at Jon almost admiringly. “So mote it be,” he said softly. 

The halter’s weight began to fade. It almost seemed to vanish, until only the ghost of its pressure remained. 

“Introductions, then. I am Lord Elias Bouchard. These are Daisy and Basira, my heads of security. You and Daisy have some things in common.

“This,” he continued, with a gesture up towards the castle, “is my estate. Castle Magnus. You are not to enter through the gates without my express permission. Do not reveal your nature to any of my mortal staff, either. 

“The loch here is at your disposal, although I would ask that you not attack any humans under my protection, and that includes my staff, unless I give the word. I’ll summon you when I have need of you. Otherwise, I’m sure you’re eager to settle in.” He waved a hand and Jon felt the heaviness of his command start to lift. Before it was truly gone, however, Lord Bouchard and his followers had already gone back to the castle.

It turned out that, if this was a dream, it was the sort he’d never wake up from. His days began and ended in the loch, down in the dark, where he could drift and try to forget what his life had become. 

Before long, the hunger set in. It started with a doe on the shore. She was graceful and warm and quick, but before he knew what he was doing, he rose from the loch and was upon her. She fled, but he was faster, and with a hunter’s accuracy he found her throat and dragged her, still kicking, beneath the water. She died, not of blood loss, but of drowning, and he didn’t even need to eat her flesh -- the  _ drowning,  _ he realized, was the point. The water tasted of blood and he hated how much he liked it, and eventually he couldn’t stand himself anymore and fled to a sheltered cove on the shore and spent the night huddled among the stones and trying not to remember what the deer had sounded like as she died. 

A week or so into his new life, Daisy came to visit. He was under the water, half-asleep, at the time, when he heard her voice calling out to him from the shore. She didn’t use his full name, just an echo --  _ Jonathan  _ \-- but it was enough for him to hear. He didn’t feel compelled to come to her call, but he went anyway, because he was lonely and afraid. 

She was wearing the black and silver uniform she’d had once before. Now that he could properly pay attention, he smelled something in her, like if music had a scent.  _ Faery, _ he thought.  _ Bouchard said we had something in common. _

“So, Basira thought I should come down here. Thought you might want some answers.”

When he was silent, she said, “You can talk, you know. No mortals around here.”

“Okay,” said Jon, and the sound of his own voice was a strange miracle. 

“Did you even believe in all this, before?”

“No.”

“What about now?”

He almost chuckled grimly, but not quite. “I’m still not sure if I do.”

“Tough. It’s real and the sooner you accept that, the easier things will be.”

“How can I go back? I don’t want to be… I don’t want to be this.” 

“You can’t.”

“There has to be  _ some way  _ \--”

“There’s not. You’re wasting time, thinking about it like that. Although, as I think of it, time’s exactly what you’ve got. We’re immortal.”

“That can’t be true; I’m pretty sure I…” It was hard to think about and harder to say, but he pushed on. “I’m pretty sure I died.”

“Yeah. You did. Not a lot of other ways for mortals to cross over. Even that’s pretty rare; most people who get attacked by kelpies just get killed.”

“So why me?”

“Why any of us? The universe doesn’t owe you answers.”

Jon wanted to be frustrated with her. He wanted to demand straight answers. But he was afraid that if he did, she’d leave, and she was the first person who’d properly spoken with him in all the time he’d been like this, and he needed her to stay. So instead, he asked, “What are you?”

“Bit of a rude question, honestly.”

“Sorry. I’ve no idea what I’m doing,” he admitted.

“That much is obvious. Fine, might as well tell you. My folk have a few names: gytrash, padfoot, shriker, barguest. Black dogs. We haunt roads, take down the odd traveler out at night.”

“You’re a predator?”

“And you’re a kelpie. Your lot aren’t exactly known for their benevolence.”

Jon changed tack. “So if you’re a dog, a fey one, how can you look like a person?”

“It’s glamour,” said Daisy. “An illusion with a bit more weight than normal, like a change of shape. It doesn’t change what I am, but it lets me do my job. You could do it too; your lot are supposed to be good at it.”

Jon jumped at this sudden glimmer of hope. “How can I learn?”

Daisy sighed. “I’ll teach you, but you have to do something for me in return.”

“Anything.”

“For one, stop saying things like ‘anything’ when someone asks you for a favor. It’s a terrible idea for fey. And secondly, don’t tell anyone else your full name. That’s how Bouchard caught you. He bought your name off that hob, called you here, and put the halter on. Names are dangerous.”

He’d figured as much. He’d had plenty of time to think over the past week. “So call me Jon, I guess.”

“Fine,” said Daisy. “Let’s begin.”

  
  


It was a month before he managed to recreate his own shape to his satisfaction. Part of the problem was that Bouchard kept Daisy busy with patrolling the roads and guarding his territory against hostile fey. Part of it was that the workings of faery magic were completely unintuitive, at least to Jon. He liked straight lines, clear answers, logical explanations. Glamour was all about symbolic thinking and emotion and metaphor. More than once, Daisy became frustrated with his slow progress, but not as frustrated as Jon himself was. He was tired of not having hands. 

At last, at dawn on the shore beneath the castle, he got it right. Daisy wasn’t even there to see it the first time. The horse’s form wavered and fell away and he was himself again, kneeling on the shore. He stared at his hands in wonder, and for the first time in years, he cried. 

Much to his disappointment, he couldn’t maintain it for long. Daisy said it was a matter of building up stamina and that in time, he’d be able to keep the glamour in place for hours, even with cold iron nearby. Now, though, it slipped away from him within minutes. He practiced every day, even though it gave him a splitting headache.

His only real point of contact was Daisy. There were fey in the nearby hills and woods, but they were strange and frightening and largely unsociable. Daisy, if she was in the right mood, would talk to him about them.

“There’s the gentry,” she’d explain, “and there’s the woods fey. Gentry are what they sound like: lords and ladies. Powerful types. Then there’s the rest of us, just average faeries like you and me. We’re the woods fey. We try to stay out of the way of the gentry. They’re dangerous.”

“And what’s Bouchard?”

“Human, sort of. It’s complicated.” She wouldn’t be drawn out on that subject. He figured that Bouchard was probably equivalent to gentry, from what she said and from the way that most of the region’s faeries stayed away from the castle. 

He hunted, practiced his glamour, talked with Daisy, wandered in the hills, swam the loch. In the winter came the biting snows and in the summer came easy winds and bright skies. He dreamt, sometimes, of spiders and songs and the weight of water in his lungs. He lost track of time. He could still feel, if he concentrated, the ghostly weight of the halter, invisible but always there. But Bouchard didn’t summon him. The castle staff avoided him. He was alone.

And then Martin Blackwood came to the castle and things changed.

The first time he saw Martin (though he wouldn’t know his name until later) was also the first time a human had approached Jon in a long while. Jon forgot himself. He let a kelpie’s glamour fill the air between them, and before he knew what was happening, the man was reaching out to touch him, and Jon was almost tensing himself, ready for the spring to drag him underwater. He caught himself just in time and ran for it, angry and afraid, and retreated underwater to fume. 

He thought he’d composed himself when he saw the human again and was determined to ignore him. He wasn’t going to drown him. He wasn’t going to talk to him, either. He didn’t need humans. He couldn’t trust them and he couldn’t trust himself. When the breeze shifted and blew the man’s scent his way, however, he caught a strange scent beneath it, the scent of rot. A fey scent, he knew by now. 

Had he missed something? Was this man fey? He approached, straining his senses, but no: he was human. He’d been around something fey, and not just fey, but a thing of decay and devouring and death. One of the worst things there could be, powerful enough that its mark lingered even now.

Jon had to tell someone. If he didn’t, these people could be in danger. He didn’t know them, didn’t particularly care about them as individuals, but he told himself he wasn’t yet so far gone that he’d let people die when he could have done something to stop it. He had that much humanity left in him yet. He had to ask Basira to check with Bouchard for permission to enter the castle, and he waited at the gates for a long time, glamoured back to human guise, shrinking from the stench of the iron in the gate. How did Daisy stand it? 

At last, the word came back: Lord Bouchard would see Jon in his study. A wary but polite Basira walked him up. He shivered a little as the roof closed over his head: he hadn't been indoors in over a year. 

Bouchard’s door made him shiver even more. The thing was not only iron but full of eyes and he felt that every one was watching him. It took more strength than he’d expected to walk through the door when Basira opened it. 

He hadn’t seen Bouchard since the day he’d called him by his name at the beach. The castle’s lord looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. 

“Ah, Jon. It  _ is  _ Jon these days, right? How can I help?”

“Something’s broken into the castle. I smelled it on one of your staff members. Decay, infestation -- I don’t know, but it’s powerful and it’s malevolent, and it will kill people.”

“Which staff member was it?” Bouchard leaned forward in his chair.

“I don’t know their names!” 

Bouchard rummaged around in his desk until he located what looked like a stone bowl, roughly a handspan in diameter. He went to a side table, took a pitcher, and poured a measure of water into the bowl. “Summon his image,” he instructed, pointing at the water.

Jon had never tried to use glamour with reflections before, but water always seemed to cooperate with him. The face of the man he’d met on the shore appeared after a few seconds of focus. All the nearby iron meant he couldn’t hold it for long, but Bouchard got a good view of it before it dissipated.

“Ah, Mr. Blackwood. One of the assistant librarians. Yes, quite a project down there.” Bouchard sat back and folded his hands contentedly. “It would be quite distressing if anything ate them before they completed their tasks.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Jon shot back.

“Me? My dear equine friend,  _ I’m  _ not going to do anything. It’s  _ you  _ who’ll protect them.”

And so, the following day, Jon -- water horse, ex-human being, perpetually terrified and in over his head -- became the fourth librarian of Castle Magnus. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was longer than I thought it'd be, but here it is! We go from galaxy brain Martin to Jon, who I proceed to absolutely put through the wringer here. 
> 
> Next chapter, back to Martin's POV!


	8. A Meeting on the Shore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One: The Water Horse, continued
> 
> There are revelations aplenty. Some cards are laid on the table. Much Processing is done.

Jon, at long last, lapsed into silence. He’d begun slowly, haltingly, as though unsure exactly where to start, and then it had all come out in a rush. His shoulders were tense, and he hadn’t met Martin’s eyes in several minutes. When he finished with the story of how he’d come to work with them, he dropped his gaze to the stony beach. 

Martin reached for words and couldn’t find any ones that felt right. But he needed to say something to break the silence -- he knew that look on Jon’s face, had worn it himself many times, that look of shame and apprehension and hurt, the look of someone waiting to be told they’re broken beyond repair. 

And so, rather than let the poisonous silence continue, Martin made himself say, “Oh Jon. I’m so sorry.”

The corner of Jon’s mouth twitched. “Not your fault.”

“That isn’t what I meant. You… oh, that’s awful. You shouldn’t have had to…”

“I was an idiot,” said Jon, “and I’ve paid for it.  _ Am _ paying for it, in fact.”

“You couldn’t have known, Jon. There was no way you could have.”

“That doesn’t do me much good. Faeries don’t make allowances for learning curves.”

This was going nowhere. That expression of anger turning inward… Martin knew the feeling. He needed to change tactics. “How can I free you?”

That got his attention. He stared up at Martin. “What?”

“You said Bouchard’s keeping you captive. How can I free you?”

“Break the halter, I suppose. That would be a first step, though I’ve no idea how you would go about doing it. There’s still so much I don’t know, and of course Daisy can’t tell me, and there’s no one else around to talk to about it.”

_ There’s me,  _ Martin found himself thinking. But that felt like a dangerous thing to say aloud somehow, so instead, he took the safer option. “There’s the library.”

“The library’s a mess.”

“So, let’s do what we were actually hired to do. Clean it up and use it for its actual purpose.”

Jon gave a rueful half-smile. “Are you sure your colleagues are willing to work with me?”

For the first time since Jon began his tale, Martin thought of Tim and Sasha and Georgie and Melanie. They were still probably ransacking the castle, looking for Jon. Clearly none of them had thought to search out by the water. “Georgie told them about you. We have to tell them  _ something _ at least.”

“You could tell them the truth,” Jon said. “The only reason I could tell you was that you figured it out, but you’re under no such restriction. Of course, there’s the difficulty that they might not believe you.”

Martin pictured Tim tossing aside a book of fairy tales with a dismissive air. “Um, yeah. I really don’t think they’ll believe me.”

“And even if they do,” Jon went on, “is there any guarantee they’d be willing to work with a monster?” The last word came out sharp and vicious. 

“You’re not --”

“I’m not a monster? Did I tell you what it feels like to drown something?” Jon’s eyes had gone hard. “What it’s like to hear it gasping and choking and taste its panic in the water? What it’s like to break bones between my teeth as it struggles? How  _ satisfying  _ it is? How I wonder, after drowning some deer or rabbit, how much better it would be to drown a  _ person?  _

“That’s what we do, you know. We get by on animals in the lean times, but  _ each uisge  _ are meant to drown  _ people.  _ We call them to us with glamour, and when they touch us, they can’t let go, and we drag them into the water and hold them until they die. And every time I see someone, even you, Martin, walk by on the shore, I want to call them to me. I want to bring them back into the loch with me and watch the light leave their eyes.”

Martin took a breath. Jon was very nearly shaking where he sat cross-legged on the shore. He’d have to choose his words carefully.

“Have you actually gone and killed a human being?”

“Not yet.”

“You haven’t  _ done  _ it, Jon. You still care about people. Everything that’s happened, and you still care. A real monster wouldn’t. And you saved my life. Twice.”

Jon made no reply, but at least he wasn’t talking about drowning anymore, and Martin was going to count that as a victory. At length, he asked, “If I talked to them, could you show them? Change shape, do your glamour thing?”

“Can you make it sound less like I’m an animal doing circus tricks?” 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, but is there a better way to convince them I’m telling the truth?”

Jon sighed. “No.”

“Okay,” said Martin, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I can talk to them, figure out a way to smooth things over.” He had no idea how, but maybe he could think of something. “Or you could stay away from the library for the time being.”

“I can’t. That thing in the office needs handling.”

Oh. Right. Another problem they’d have to manage. “That’s what’s digging up through the floor? That rotting fey thing?”

“Almost certainly.”

“So… were you trying to break into the office?”

“Yes. Unsuccessfully, I might add. That iron door is difficult to get around.”

“If we told them, they could help us get rid of it.”

“That’d put you all in harm’s way.”

“From what you’ve said, we’re already in harm’s way.”

Jon frowned. “I don’t want you all getting dragged into this. Martin, you’ve seen some of it -- you must know that faeries are  _ dangerous.  _ Anyone who gets too close is liable to get hurt.”

Martin, once again, didn’t know what to say. The sounds underneath Sasha’s office were scary, certainly, but so was the thought of Jon facing them alone. Martin’s impression from Jon’s story was that, for all their glamour, kelpies were not the most powerful of the fey. If Jon went down into the dark beneath the castle, what were the odds he’d come back out?

Before Martin could gather himself sufficiently to reply, another voice rang down the shore. “Martin?  _ Jon?” _

Both of them turned, equally startled, to see Sasha making her way down the bluff. She was alone and looked worried. 

“Martin, what are you doing out here? Are you all right? You’re supposed to be resting in the library. And Jon, we’ve been looking for you. Where have you been?”

“Right here,” said Jon. 

“I’m sorry if I worried you, Sasha. I’m fine. I just realized something and I had to come out here.”

Sasha made it down the bluff and advanced towards them on the shore. Their expressions must have told her that something unusual had happened here, and accordingly, she squared up in front of them. “Would you two mind explaining what’s been going on here?”

Martin glanced at Jon. He’d never explicitly given his permission for Martin to relate his story. But Jon nodded slightly. “I’ll do my circus trick as needed,” he said.

“Thank you, Jon,” said Martin. He turned back to Sasha, ready to begin, and then reconsidered. “Sasha, would you mind bringing the others? I think it’ll be easier if we only have to cover this once.”

Sasha shook her head. “Martin, I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone here with him. No offense, Jon, but your behavior has been… erratic, to say the least.”

“I have no intention of hurting Martin,” said Jon. 

“It’s fine, Sasha,” Martin told her. “Really. I’ve been alone here with him for a while now, anyway. It’ll be okay.”

Sasha hesitated, then, “Fine. I’ll be back with the others. This had better be an awfully good explanation.” She turned and jogged back up the bluff. 

As she climbed the trail, Martin remembered to say, “Georgie’s here. In the castle”

“What’s she doing here?” asked Jon in alarm.

“Looking for you.”

“You said you’d talked to her, but…” 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. She’ll probably come down here with Sasha.”

Jon looked out over the water for a moment. Martin wondered whether he was considering running for the loch. 

“Are you going to be all right, seeing her?”

“I haven’t seen her in years,” said Jon, which did not exactly answer the question. But Martin figured he shouldn’t pry. If Jon couldn’t lie, then dodging questions was all he had. So Martin stayed quiet, giving Jon space to let himself be drawn out, if he wanted.

When Jon spoke again, though, it wasn’t to answer Martin’s question. “How’d you figure it out?”

Martin gave him a quick summary of the morning’s events and his own thought process. He finished by saying, “I’m not really sure how I figured out you were a kelpie, though. A gut feeling, plus some logic.”

“That’s impressive,” Jon said at length.

Martin couldn’t quite meet Jon’s eyes. He’d never been good at taking compliments.

The quiet stretched on, not precisely uncomfortable, but still slightly awkwardly. The more Martin looked at Jon, the more tired he seemed. If kelpies could make their human forms look however they wanted, then Jon hadn’t been paying attention to his appearance. There were circles under his eyes and his face was drawn, like a man only just realizing the depths of his own exhaustion. 

At length, the others appeared over the edge of the bluff. Sasha was leading them at a brisk walk. With her were Tim, Melanie, and Georgie -- and, surprisingly, Basira. Martin kept an eye on Georgie, and when she caught sight of Jon, he saw the same look she’d had yesterday in the castle courtyard: shock, fear, relief, confusion. For Jon’s part, he just looked all the more tired, and perhaps a bit resigned. 

Martin shifted himself on his boulder so he could face all of them at once. He needed to make this right. He had to pull these people together. They needed each other, he thought, even if they didn’t realize it. 

The pressure made him stutter, just a little, as he spoke. “Hi everyone.”

“Jon?” Georgie stood beside Sasha and Melanie. “Why are you here?” Her voice didn’t quite shake, but it wasn’t far off. 

“Hello Georgie,” said Jon. His shoulders tensed.

Sasha said, “I ran into Basira on my way back to the castle. She asked if she could join us.”

“If we’ve all had our introductions,” Tim cut in, “perhaps we can get some answers. What the hell is going on here?” He glared at Jon as he spoke.

Jon merely gestured at Martin. Maybe the terms of his servitude to Elias prevented him from speaking, or maybe he just didn’t want to talk to Tim, but either way, it was all on Martin now. 

“Okay. Okay. Jon’s asked me to… well, he hasn’t quite asked, but he’s given permission… I mean, I got the story from him and I can tell you.”

“Why can’t he tell us himself?” demanded Tim, still staring at Jon.

“That’s part of the story. There’s a reason why he can’t tell you.”

“That’s true,” interjected Basira. “If it’s the story I think they’re telling, it’s all true.”

Everyone apart from Jon and Martin turned to her in astonishment. 

“You know about all this?” exclaimed Sasha.

“It’s my job to know things.”

After a moment, Tim said, “All right. Anyone else have any cryptic, unhelpful shit to say, or can we get to the explanations please?”

“Faeries are real and Jon’s a kelpie,” Martin blurted out.

Silence fell. 

“Care to elaborate, Martin?” asked Sasha. 

He did. He started with Jon’s story, not going into too much detail, but making sure the others heard the pertinent bits: the encounter with a mysterious being called Michael, drowning and waking up, Elias getting hold of his name, catching the scent of the fey thing on Martin, saving him from the music in the hollow hill, and finally a brief summary of how Martin had put the pieces together. He left out his own dreams and what little Jon had told him of his childhood. As he spoke, he kept darting glances at Jon, trying to gauge his reaction to Martin’s retelling, but the kelpie’s face was blank as he continued to stare out over the waters. When he wasn’t watching Jon, Martin kept his eyes on the beach. He couldn’t bring himself to look up at the others. 

Martin finished his tale and, someone desperately, turned to Basira for support. “Does that sound right, Basira?”

“Yep.” 

Martin turned his gaze up at last. Sasha’s face was blank, almost carefully so. Tim was openly gaping in disbelief. Melanie was holding her notebook in what looked like an attempt at note-taking, but had quite obviously stopped in the middle of the tale. Georgie was looking at Jon, who did not look back at her.

“Are you serious?” Tim asked. “This is… I’m sorry, Martin, but this is just a little bit much.”

“It’s the truth,” Basira offered.

“You want proof?” Jon didn’t turn to look at them as he spoke. 

“That’d be a good start.”

“Fine. But when I do this, I can’t come back right away. Glamour takes a lot out of me. I’ll need to rest before changing back.”

Martin heard this with a sinking feeling. Jon wouldn’t be there afterwards, not in a way Martin could talk with. He liked the equine version of his colleague, but it was the human Jon he wanted just then. 

“How long?” he asked.

“A few hours.”

“Should we talk about the thing under Sasha’s office first?”

“It’ll keep until tomorrow,” Jon replied. “I’ll meet you all here then. Don’t go into the office in the meantime.” His exhaustion had been replaced by nervous tension. He was already pulling away, taking a few steps back, closing his eyes.

It was the same process that Martin had seen earlier, but in reverse. Jon’s outline wavered, rippled, and splashed outwards, and then the human shape was gone, and there was only the dark horse on the shore. Jon was relatively small in both of his forms, but even so, as a horse he outweighed most humans by the better part of a thousand pounds. The sudden change in size and scope was jarring. 

Tim swore. Sasha said nothing, but took an apparently unconscious step back. Georgie leaned in to watch and Melanie reached out to grab her shoulder. Only Basira stood unmoved. 

“That’s our proof,” Martin told them. He almost wanted to reach out and lay a hand on Jon’s shoulder, but with all these people watching, it wasn’t the same as their quiet moments on the beach. Moreover, he saw Jon shifting his weight, skin shivering as though shaking off flies. He’d been in a hurry to let his human glamour go, and now, it seemed, he was in a hurry to be gone. 

“Bye, Jon,” he said, just to get it over with.

Jon turned his head and blew out a soft breath -- gratefully, perhaps -- before turning and trotting away. He soon turned a hard right into the shallows, broke into a canter, and dove into deeper waters. The loch closed over his head. He was gone.

The others helped Martin back to the castle. He was having trouble reading their expressions. Was that distrust towards him now? Anger? He couldn’t tell and was too afraid, at this point, to ask. But at least they were still keeping to his slow pace, all climbing the bluff together.

“Are you all right, Georgie?” asked Sasha as they climbed up the trail.

“I think so,” she said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not just now.” Melanie wrapped an arm around her.

Martin, walking behind them and alongside Tim, focused on keeping his footing. The trail was uneven and tricky to navigate with a crutch. Tim looked to be brooding. He said nothing.

Basira led them all back to the gates. She stopped them before they entered the castle and stood in front of the iron-wrought doors with arms crossed. “We need to have a talk.”

“What about?” asked Melanie, one arm still wrapped around Georgie’s shoulders.

“You two, for one. You’re not supposed to know about this stuff. Technically, neither are they.” She waved a hand at the three librarians. “But at least they work here. They’re under contract. You’re not.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Melanie’s tone was both soft and stern.

“You can’t write about what you’ve heard here. I mean it. Whatever report you’re working on, this stays out of it.”

“People are disappearing, and it’s in the public interest to know  _ why.” _

“It’s in the public interest for there not to be a panic about the supernatural. And it’s in your interests, career-wise, not to put this in writing.”

“Is that a threat?”

Basira closed her eyes for a moment. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but here goes. If you try to publish, I guarantee that  _ something  _ will come for you. It might be something Bouchard sends. Or it might not. The things out here, they  _ really  _ don’t like it when people talk about them. Plenty would take an interest in anything published about this. Some of them have influences in London.”

Melanie opened her mouth as if to argue, but Georgie put a hand on hers. “It’s okay. Let’s talk about it later.” Then, to Basira, “Don’t worry about us. We won’t go telling tales.”

“Georgie, we should really talk about this --”

“We will. Let’s do it back in the village, though.”

“Probably a good idea,” Basira put in. “I’ll drive you back. Come on.” She turned back towards the gate, and as she walked, she called out, “And you librarians, stay out of that office.”

The afternoon was wearing on by now, the shadows beginning to lengthen. Martin, Tim, and Sasha watched as Basira hitched a pony up to the cart. Martin, for one, had an aching ankle and felt completely drained of words and needed, in a fundamental and soul-deep way, a decent cup of tea. There were, of course, none to be had. Instead, he just sat on the steps with Tim and Sasha as the cart passed through the gates and onto the greenway, bound for the village. 

“I’m sorry,” he said as the sound of clattering hooves and harness and wheels faded. “I didn’t mean it to go like that.” He wasn’t sure just how he  _ had  _ wanted it to go, only that he wished there had been some kind of closure after he told the story. He wished that Jon and Georgie could have straightened things out, that all the librarians could have agreed about facing the thing underneath Sasha’s office, that Jon could have stayed. Instead, what should have been a proper, air-clearing revelation was flat and unfinished. 

They’d talk to Jon tomorrow, of course, but who knew if Georgie and Melanie would be there, or if anything would really work out at all. If they’d realize what Martin strongly suspected, that they’d need one another.

“It’s okay, Martin.” Sasha caught him by surprise by actually putting a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for telling us.”

“Are you saying you believe me?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Really?”

“I saw it with my own eyes by the loch, right? But truthfully, Martin, I’ve believed in faeries since I was a kid.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. I used to talk to one when I was small. He lived in the woods out behind my house. He looked like a child, but he had antlers like a deer, and he could tell me what the trees were saying to one another.”

“You’ve believed in this stuff all along?”

“Why else come to work in a place like this? I got bored of academia and thought maybe I could track down some real magic up here. I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon, though.”

Martin smiled with sheer relief. Sasha believed him. Maybe she’d even be willing to help him and Jon. Together, they could look for ways to break Jon’s binding and perhaps even convince Jon to let them help him with the thing under the office. 

“Tim?” Sasha gave him a gentle nudge. “How are you holding up?”

For the first time since they left the shore, Tim made eye contact with another person. He stared back at Sasha as he said “Fine.”

“Say more about that.”

“What’s there to say?”

“Look, I won’t force you to talk, but I’m guessing you have some very strong feelings about what just happened, and it’s not healthy to bottle all that up.”

Tim exhaled audibly. “No need to worry about me. I believe you, Martin.”

“Do you think you can work with Jon?” Sasha pressed.

“I don’t know.” 

“Think about it, okay?”

“I will.” With that, Tim stood and headed for the door to the castle interior. “I’m going back to the Pit.”

“You can have the rest of the afternoon off, you know. It’s not that long until dinner.”

“I have some things I want to get done.” He didn’t turn as he spoke. He only wrenched open the door, more forcefully than was strictly necessary, and returned to the castle’s stony darkness. 

“Should we go after him?” Martin wondered aloud.

“Best not.” Sasha stood up herself. “He needs to cool off. I’ll find him at dinner. And  _ you”  _ \-- turning sharply to Martin -- “need to rest. Let’s get you to your rooms.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’ve been running around far too much for someone with an ankle injury. Come on. I’ll get us something to eat, and I think we could both use a drink.”

Sasha ended up finding a bottle of Scotch in the kitchens. With that, and a couple of trays of soup, she and Martin passed most of the evening. He was propped up on pillows on his bed. Sasha dragged a chair into the small room and brought a pack of cards. And for a while, they weren’t librarians or investigators, just two people talking of smaller and simpler things.

Both Martin and Sasha were quite good at cards and spent a lot of time trying to out-bluff each other. At last, when Martin won the final round, Sasha threw her hands up with a laugh. “I give up. I think your tell is that the more innocent you look, the more you’ve got some devious plan going on.” She insisted on toasting him as the victor, and he poured out another measure of Scotch for them both. He was still a little sad that he couldn’t have tea, but he was finding the whiskey an acceptable substitute. 

As the evening wore on, Martin got Sasha to tell him about the faerie she’d known as a child. She’d grown up not far from London, just enough distance outside the city to be called the countryside, and behind her parents’ house was an old forest. Many of the woods in England were managed: the undergrowth cleared away, deadfall gathered for firewood, brushes and brambles kept in check. Not so this forest: it was old and tangled, and at its center was an ancient oak, and there lived the fey creature she’d known. He’d gone by several names and seemed to change them every season. They’d played together whenever she could get away. Then her parents had sent her off to school and the instructors had done their best to teach her that there were no such things as faeries, and when she’d come back, her childhood friend had vanished. But Sasha had never been quite convinced that she’d imagined him, and when she’d gotten the chance to study faery lore, well, she’d ended up here, in a remote part of Scotland, chasing the fey.

Tim didn’t make an appearance. Sasha reported that a lantern was lit in the library, and when she’d gone to check on him, he’d been knee-deep in books. He hadn’t wanted to talk or come to dinner or join them in Martin’s room. The only book whose title Sasha had been able to catch was the one Tim had been reading at the time:  _ The Changeling.  _

“We’ll talk to him tomorrow,” she said. “I think we could all use a good night’s sleep.”

Martin nodded his agreement. By then, the Scotch had taken full effect and he felt pleasantly drowsy. His leg didn’t hurt anymore. He blinked slowly and smiled while Sasha packed up the cards.

“Good night, Sasha,” he said as she made for the door.

“Rest up.” She blew out the candle as she left.

His dreams were not quiet. There were storms and seas, a spider in a silver web, blood in the water. He dreamt of standing stones and a wall of mist. The familiar music called to him, but for once, he didn’t feel compelled to follow, and he drifted through scene after scene as it played in the distance.

The mists rolled back to reveal a door. The waters opened, and on the lakebed were mountains of bones. Eyes carved in stone tracked him wherever he went. He knew he was dreaming but couldn’t wake up. 

Eventually, the dream dissolved into a blur of music and light. The images changed too quickly for Martin to even register what they were. He let them play around him until he finally awoke. 

The first thing he noticed upon waking was that his leg didn’t hurt nearly so badly this morning. The second was that there was light creeping under the door, more so than usual. He had little sense of what time it was, though he figured Sasha would have woken him by breakfast. He felt wide awake, so rather than try to go back to sleep and dream confusing dreams, he dressed, grabbed his crutch, and opened the door.

The corridor candles were all lit. Normally most of them were doused overnight, but this time, they were all burning. When Martin passed the library on his way to the stairs, he saw that someone had kept the lamps burning there, too. He called out to Tim but heard no response. Maybe he was deep in the stacks and couldn’t hear Martin’s voice. 

Martin debated going looking for him, but didn’t want to run into him the way he’d been last night. It might be best to let Sasha speak with him first. He, Martin, wanted to find Jon. 

He was in luck with the hour, at least: he’d once again managed to awaken at the right time to see Basira opening the gate at dawn. He waved a hopeful greeting to her.

“Morning, Martin,” she said. “Stay safe out there.”

“Did Georgie and Melanie get back to the village all right?”

“I dropped them off myself. I don’t think they’ll be coming back for a few days. Said they needed some time to sort things out.”

“Oh. Okay.” He would have liked to have the journalists’ help sorting out this mess, but he could understand Georgie wanting some space. Based on his behavior yesterday, Martin suspected Jon would be happy not to have to face her just yet.

So, as the morning brightened over the water, Martin picked his slow way down the bluff towards his meeting with Jon. The sky was overcast but not actively raining, and he decided to take that as a good sign. 

He’d make it work. He had to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure it will all go off without a hitch, Martin. Don't you worry about a thing.


	9. Most Noble Company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One, The Water Horse, continued.
> 
> Jon isn't good at expressing his feelings and Martin does some introspection. Meanwhile, the librarians reach an agreement and get back to work.
> 
> CW: canon-typical worms

Jon was waiting by the loch for Martin. He’d found a convenient boulder and was sitting atop it cross-legged. His expression was hard to read as Martin approached, but he did look marginally less exhausted than he had the day before.

“Hi, Jon.” 

“Shouldn’t you be getting breakfast?”

“I’ll get something later.” Martin settled himself on a nearby outcropping of earth and grass just above the shore. 

“How’s the ankle?”

“Better, thanks for asking.”

With that, Jon seemed to be out of ideas for conversation. Martin likewise had no notion of what to say. Every question felt either too flippant --  _ what do you like for breakfast, rabbits?  _ \-- or far too weighty of a conversation opener --  _ will you let me help you?  _

It was Jon who attempted to rescue them in the end. “What did you do before you came here?”

“Oh, um, lots of little things. Various places. Lots of people. You know.” Clearly, Jon had been searching for an innocuous question, but he’d managed to stumble upon Martin’s little secret. 

_ I should just tell him. What’s he going to do, tell Bouchard?  _ But the words wouldn’t come. 

Jon, evidently sensing a sore spot, retreated. “What’s the news in London? I don’t really keep up with current events.” There was a faint sardonic edge to his voice.

Martin ran through what he could remember: the War still going on, scandals in Parliament, new inventions powered by steam. He hadn’t had proper news in weeks, not since arriving at the castle, but all of it was new to Jon, who listened intently. 

“Things don’t change, do they?” he remarked when Martin finished.

“They reckon that new steam thingy might catch on.”

Jon shrugged. “Who knows? It’s a new century.”

Another lull in conversation followed, and Martin took the opportunity to ask a question he’d had on his mind. “What are Breekon and Hope?”

“Delivery men, or more accurately, delivery things. I’ve never been entirely sure what they are, but they reek of faerie, and not in a friendly way. I think Bouchard pays them to keep the castle supplied.”

“He can’t. They’re trying to poison his employees; he wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Yes, he would. You may have noticed he’s not very invested in workplace safety.” 

“But why let them hurt his staff? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe it’s part of whatever deal he has with them. They supply his castle, he lets them prey on his employees.”

“Oh.” Then, “No, that still doesn’t make sense. On the one hand, he’s letting Breekon and Hope sell poison to the staff, and on the other hand he sends you in to protect us? Why would he care in one case but not the other?”

Jon shrugged. “I’ve no idea what his motivations are.”

“Would Daisy know?”

“Daisy doesn’t talk about these things. I suspect it’s part of her contract.” Talking about Bouchard seemed to be making Jon more and more grim. Martin decided to change the subject.

“What are your plans for the thing under Sasha’s office?”

“Head down there, find out what it is, and kill it. Not much more to be done.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don’t even know what this thing is. From what you said, it’s probably really powerful. Maybe there’s a better way of getting rid of it.”

“You still want me to use the library.” Jon’s voice was flat. He didn’t make eye contact.

“Well -- yes -- that is, we could help you.”

“It’s dangerous. The more involved you are, the greater the risk that you get hurt.”

“We’re already involved, Jon.” It came out blunter than he’d expected, but it was true. “I’m having dreams of music and mists and now spiders, apparently, and I don’t know what they mean except that something’s  _ calling to me  _ out there. And Sasha’s known faeries since she was young. You’re not going to protect us by shutting us out.” He was scared, truly -- he had been ever since that walk in the hills, but he was proud of himself for not letting the fear show as he spoke. 

Jon gazed out over the waves. When he spoke, that flat tone was stronger than ever. “Isn’t it time you went and got breakfast?” 

Martin’s heart sank. Suddenly the morning breeze seemed colder. “Yeah, sure, okay, I’ll be back,” he babbled as he collected his crutch and heaved himself upright. “See you after breakfast. I’ll bring the others, no need to worry.”

He let himself turn back just once. When he did, it was only to see Jon impassively watching him go.

Even with his early-morning excursion, he’d beaten Tim and Sasha to the staff dining room. He carefully carried a plate of eggs with his free hand and sat at the table near the window that the librarians normally claimed. As one or two staff members trickled in, he started in on breakfast.

Jon. He couldn’t  _ not  _ think about him, not after the conversation they’d had. He could be kind -- Martin could vividly picture that afternoon when the kelpie had comforted him, before he’d known who was behind those eyes. He’d seemed so relieved when Martin had guessed his identity, and in between times Martin had gotten flashes of that same gentleness. But then he’d go all prickly and moody again and push everyone away.

A mug rattled on the table. Martin jumped. It was only Sasha, though, closely followed by a hollow-eyed Tim. 

“Sorry for startling you. How’s the ankle?”

“Better, actually. How are you?” He directed the question at Sasha, but couldn’t help glancing at Tim. He’d obviously been up all night. His usual bright grin was gone and his jaw was clenched. 

“All right. Confused. I don’t know.”

“And… Tim?”

“Fine.” Tim set his own mug down and took a seat. 

“Were you in the library all night?”

“I had some research to do.” His tone didn’t invite further questions.

“Okay. Okay. Well, um, I talked to Jon just now and --”

“You  _ what?” _ Tim exclaimed. It came out as a whisper-shout; they were not alone in the dining room, but all the nearby tables were empty. 

“I went down and talked to him --”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah, and he says --”

“Martin, he  _ eats people.  _ He’s a  _ monster.” _

“He said he’s never killed anyone!”

“Of course he does. You believe him?”

“He can’t lie!”

“That’s what he’d tell you, but where’s any proof? My God, Martin, open your eyes! You’re letting whatever the fuck’s going on between you  _ blind _ you to the fact that we have absolutely no reason to trust him!”

“He saved my life! If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead already.”

Tim screwed his eyes shut. When he spoke, it was in a quiet, strained voice. “You can’t trust these things, no matter what it seems. They’re always playing games with you. That’s what they do. They lure you in and they mess with your head.”

“How would you know?”

“I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“I’m sorry, but if you’re going to make accusations like that, you can’t just --”

“Later, Martin. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sasha said, “Maybe best continue this elsewhere.” She nodded meaningfully at the rest of the dining room, which was beginning to fill for the breakfast hour.

“Will you two at least come down to the shore with me after this? Just talk to him? There’ll be three of us there.”

“I’ll come,” said Sasha at once. After a moment, Tim nodded as well. 

Martin finished his breakfast with no real satisfaction. He’d really come to enjoy spending time with his coworkers: laughing with Tim, chatting with Sasha, even squinting over English-Greek dictionaries by their side. He could only hope that their friendship wasn’t lost forever, that he could mend things with Tim. Maybe he and Jon could even come around to liking each other in time? Maybe that was a touch overly optimistic. 

And what had Tim meant about something going on between him and Jon? It was true he’d been friendly with the horse on the shore before he knew it was Jon, and Jon had saved his life a couple of times, and he’d told Martin his story, and Martin had gone down to see him --

Fair enough. Looked at it from that angle, there  _ was  _ something going on between him and Jon. But what exactly that something was, Martin couldn’t say. 

Well. If he was being honest with himself, he knew part of it. It was Jon’s crooked smile, the gentle pressure of his hands helping Martin to the boulder, his voice when he’d said “Hello Martin,” even that sarcastic edge when he spoke. 

It’d never work out. He knew that. There were a thousand reasons that nothing would happen, not least among them that Jon certainly didn’t reciprocate his interest. Why would he? Martin had been through his fair share of one-sided attractions and he’d always ended up alone anyway. He could get past this, he told himself. He always had done. 

Finally, breakfast was over. Martin was moving a bit faster this morning, and Tim and Sasha only had to slow down mildly so that he could keep up. Neither Basira nor Daisy were at the gate to watch them leave the castle. 

Jon, when they came upon him, was still seated on his boulder. He didn’t appear to have moved at all in the time it had taken to have breakfast. He still wore the same inscrutable expression as they approached along the shore. 

Martin gave him a wave, to which he gave a slight nod. Tim just folded his arms across his chest and scowled.

“Hello, Jon,” Sasha began. 

“Hello.”

“I think you have something to tell us about my office.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Out with it.”

“Fine. First though: I want you all to stay out of this. Keep away from the office and don’t get in my way. I’m going to handle it, and any interference on your part is only liable to get you all killed.”

“I’m not agreeing to anything until you tell us what you know,” Sasha replied. Inwardly, Martin cheered just a little. Maybe Sasha really could help him convince Jon to accept help.

Jon lowered his head into his hands and pressed his fingers into his temples, as though fighting off a headache. “All right. Here goes.

“I think the thing down below the castle is a powerful faery creature of rot and decay. I smelled it on Martin a while back, and truth be told, I can smell it on all of you right now. It’s digging upwards towards your office, but I suspect given time, it’ll undermine the entire castle basement. Then it’ll break up through the floors and devour the place.”

“How long before it breaks through?” 

“A few days? A few weeks? I’d have a better idea if I could see inside your office.”

“So it was you, trying to break in.”

“Yes.”

Tim raised an accusatory hand. “Wait a minute. On the day we first talked to you about the door, you said you didn’t know what was down there. I  _ knew  _ you could lie.”

Jon sniffed. “What I  _ meant _ was that I didn’t understand  _ all  _ of what was going on with your office. I still don’t. The identity of the creature, the method it’s using to get in, its allies and weaknesses, its motives… I truly don’t know. Technically, it wasn’t a lie.”

“That’s an awfully shaky technicality,” Tim shot back.

“Have you met faeries? All we  _ do  _ is shaky technicalities.”

“Moving right along,” Sasha interjected, “what do you propose to do about this creature?”

“Go down there. Attack it. Kill it.”

“And you’re sure you can accomplish this?”

“Of course not. I can’t predict the future.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you?”

“I couldn’t possibly assign a number --”

“Give it your best shot, then.”

“Two.” The words came out reluctantly, and Jon glared at Sasha.

“That’s not good enough. If what you say is true, the entire castle is under threat, and all the staff are in danger. We need more help.” 

Despite everything, despite the entire castle being in danger, despite the pit in his stomach, Martin’s inward cheering grew louder. Sasha was going to help make Jon see sense.

“Have you talked to Daisy?”

“I tried. Bouchard keeps her busy. She’s smelled it too, but she doesn’t have a better plan.”

“What if she went along with you? How confident would you be then?”

“Not enough to satisfy you, I expect.”

Martin decided that his moment had come. “I thought we might use the library. Maybe there’s a book in there that could help us.”

“And I told you before, the place is a mess and there isn’t enough time to sort through it all before the thing under the castle eats us all. And I’m not an idiot; I already did some looking, when I was working with you all. I didn’t find anything useful.”

“Still, why not give it a try? At least for a few days? With all three of us looking, we’d have a better chance.”

Jon glanced between the three of them, lingering longest on Tim. “Are all three of you willing to help?”

Sasha and Tim exchanged a look, then Sasha said, “Yes.” 

“Okay, then. But none of you are coming down there with me.” 

Inspiration struck, and Martin found himself saying, “We won’t put ourselves in danger needlessly if you don’t.”

Jon glowered at him. Martin made himself stand up straight. He couldn’t quite meet Jon’s eyes, but it didn’t matter. Sasha was nodding. “Is that a deal?”

“Deal,” Jon snapped. “Can we get on with it?”

Sasha agreed, “Let’s get to work.”

As they walked back to the library, Jon explained how he’d begun his research. It had been haphazard, skimming through titles and sections, unable to dive deep into anything out of sheer disorganization. None of them could think of a better strategy with the library in the state it was, but at least there would be four searchers instead of one. 

First, though, Jon insisted on getting a look into Sasha’s office. Tim and Martin stood behind them in the corridor while Sasha unlocked the iron door. As she did, Martin inspected the burn marks and winced a bit -- had Jon been hurt trying to get through? 

The door swung open with a creak and at once, the soft popping and clicking sound rose up from the floor. It sounded, not exactly louder, but more  _ defined  _ than it had before. Jon must be right. Whatever this was, it was getting closer.

Jon made a face as the door opened. “That smells foul.”

“I don’t smell anything,” said Sasha.

“It’s like the poison in the tea. You wouldn’t smell it.” He stepped past her and threaded his way through the cramped, crowded office. Martin shifted to get a better view. Jon stopped in front of the desk and pointed at the floor.

“It’s coming from under there.”

“We could have told you that,” grumbled Tim.

“Help me move the desk.”

“We already did that,” Sasha said. “There’s nothing there.”

“Remember the scents you can’t pick up? There could easily be something glamoured under there. You wouldn’t see it. Now please help me move the desk.”

Martin, being injured, waited in the corridor while Sasha, Tim, and Jon shifted the desk. Martin noticed that Jon kept his hands away from the iron fastenings. When they’d pulled the desk back out, he climbed over it and spent a long moment staring at the floor beneath.

“Any earth-shattering insights?” Tim demanded.

“It’s closest under here. It’ll break through soon.”

“Won’t it be stuck in the office? Behind the iron door?” Sasha wanted to know.

“From the sounds of it, no.” Jon stood and faced them. “It sounds like a whole horde of small things, or a swarm, perhaps. I suspect it’s a creature of many parts. Worms would be my best guess. It’ll throw bits of itself at the door and it won’t care how many die in the process of breaking through. It’ll take a while, but it will get past. That is, if it doesn’t just dig outwards until it reaches the other side of the door.”

“Do you have any idea how to stop it?” asked Sasha.

“That, it seems, is where the library comes in. Shall we begin?”

Martin settled himself in a chair in the north stacks with a pile of papers promisingly entitled “The Magick of Death” and got to reading. For all the title promised, it turned out to be a disappointingly theoretical treatise on rituals that claimed to prolong life. From time to time, he looked up to watch one of the others pass by with stacks of papers or books in hand. None of them were talking, but Tim and Jon both managed to convey through body language a kind of silent sullenness.

He almost couldn’t believe that he’d pulled it off, at least this far. All four librarians working together on a solution, and Jon having made a deal not to dash recklessly into peril. Of course, the language had been vague enough that Martin doubted it’d hold the kelpie to his word, but on principle, he’d made progress. 

He finished the last paper in the stack. There were a few pages missing, but from the context of the rest of the work, Martin figured it didn’t matter. There was no practical advice at all on fighting a fey thing of rot and decay. 

On impulse, he stood and made his way to the bookcase he’d been searching yesterday. He pulled out  _ Of the Waters and the Wild  _ and flipped through the pages, searching for anything relevant. Disappointingly, the book that had been so helpful about kelpies had nothing useful to say about their present situation. 

They couldn’t see the sun down in the library, but the day wore on and the candles burned low. Tim went to change a few that guttered out. They had a few precious oil lamps, but not enough to provide light for all four of them. The only sound was the shuffling of pages. None of them were bothering with their usual cataloging or filing. Their sole task was to find out about the thing under the castle. 

Sasha called a break for lunch. Jon, as usual, insisted on working alone while the others ate. So the three human librarians ate in a tense quiet. Tim wasn’t looking at anyone and Sasha and Martin’s attempts to make conversation fell flat. 

Martin found himself watching the other staff members, and it hit him once again that they were  _ all  _ in danger. If they failed to contain this thing in the library… his stomach twisted. Everyone in this room could be killed. Sasha and Tim could die and Jon, though immortal, was far from invulnerable. Even Bouchard in his tower might be threatened.

Turning to Sasha, he asked, “Do you think we should consider asking Bouchard to evacuate the place?” But even as he spoke, he thought of the poisoned tea and what Jon had said about Bouchard’s concerns for his workers. It was still difficult for Martin to imagine that anyone could be so callous, but after what he’d done to Jon… 

“In case something goes wrong, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“We can try, but to be honest, Martin, I’m not that optimistic about him.”

“Should we talk to Basira and Daisy, then? They might be helpful. After all, they’re supposed to protect this place, right?”

“I’ll go have a chat with them after we’re done here. You two go on back down and I’ll catch up to you.”

“Thanks, Sasha.”

Tim, still silent, pushed away his empty bowl and headed for the door. Martin finished the last of his soup and followed. Tim, unusually, didn’t wait for him to catch up. 

The rest of the day passed unproductively. Sasha reported that Daisy had been out when she’d gone to talk to the guards, but that Basira had listened to what she’d had to say and promised to relay the message. She didn’t know when Daisy would be back.

“Perfect,” Jon said. “She’ll get back just in time to find the castle in ruins.”

“Less griping and more researching,” Sasha told him. Jon duly shut up, though still grimaced as he turned back to a thick volume he’d been skimming.

Martin adjusted his ankle so it sat more comfortably, then followed suit.

On the third day, Sasha found something.

It had been two mornings of Jon checking the office for signs of the thing beneath breaking through, two days of slowly creeping dread, working from dawn until sunset and beyond, waiting in vain for Daisy to return. It got so that they all flinched at every soft scrape and sudden click, eyeing the floor in suspicion, waiting for the stones to break and the creatures below to come pouring up into the light. Two days of Martin’s eyes going blurry from reading. He slept in nightmarish fragments and awoke several times each night, heart racing. More than once he found himself looping around on the same sentence, unable to carry on. 

He still felt braver now that it was all of them together. Not properly united by any means, not all friends, but together. Pursuing a common purpose. That at least made it easier to put one foot in front of another, read one line after the next. His ankle was feeling better. Not perfect, but better. He could even get around without the crutch for short distances.

The afternoon of the third day came. Outside the rain had come pouring for the second day in a row. Jon had been thoroughly drenched when he arrived just after dawn, the first one in the library, closely followed by Tim. In the evenings, Martin had watched him walk out into the storm and wanted to ask him to stop, come back into the light and warmth, but he knew he couldn’t ask that of Jon. It couldn’t be like that between them. 

That image of Jon in the courtyard, walking away out the iron doors, and Basira shutting the gate and dropping the crossbar behind him, played over and over in Martin’s head. He knew he was supposed to be reading this book on binding rituals, but the words had stopped making sense. He shook himself. They were counting on him to do his part. He had to keep going.

_...with three measures of saltpeter and one of coal, combine with sulphur... _

\-- Jon by the shore, Martin reaching out to him --

_...and is most efficacious if prepared by quarter-moon’s light by running water...  _

\-- a dark horse screaming into a wall of mist --

_...invocation, not to be used lightly, but only by those properly instructed in its uses... _

\-- “Hello, Martin” --

“I found something!”

Martin jumped. It was the first sudden sound he’d heard in hours. He turned to see Tim and Jon looking similarly startled, and Sasha standing in front of the nearest bookcase with a slender folio in hand, triumph written across her face.

“This is from  _ Recollections from the Border-lands.  _ It’s a passage that the author says was dictated by a faery he met while traveling in Russia. Listen to this: _ ‘By night’s end I came upon the fiend, which had secreted itself within a barrow. My companions and I, a most noble company, banished it by fire and smoke, and rooted it out.  _

_ “It was in form like a thousand worms, yet it moved as one creature. Its singing was strong, to turn the wills of mortals, but we, undaunted, guarded one another against all harm, and by iron and flame did we defeat it. There were feasting and dancing and a dozen days of rejoicing when we returned to the sun. _

“That’s all, I’m afraid. It doesn’t say any more about it. But one thing’s clear at least: we’re going to need fire. And you can’t go in alone, Jon.”

“Why not?”

“It explicitly talked about  _ companions  _ and  _ guarding one another  _ and also iron, which I’m pretty sure you can’t carry with you. It’ll take several people.”

“Hey!” Tim interjected. “I have an idea: why don’t we all just  _ leave?  _ Just evacuate the castle, all of us. If this thing wants into the library so bad, why don’t we just  _ let it?  _ Rather than all of us risking our lives in a losing battle?”

“Well  _ I’m  _ going in,” Jon said. “I don’t have a choice. And you can’t evacuate the castle without Bouchard’s approval, and I highly doubt he’ll give it.  _ You  _ can leave if you want; in fact, you probably should. Get at least a few people out while you can.”

“And leave you and maybe Basira and Daisy to fight this alone?” Sasha protested.

Tim insisted, “The castle guard exist. It’s their job to do stuff like this.”

“Can we skip straight to the dozen days of rejoicing?” Martin joked. It failed to lighten the mood. The others glanced at him but made no reply.

“Tim, I won’t force you to stay,” said Sasha. “But I want to help, whether that’s researching or gathering supplies or --”

“-- Or getting yourself killed?”

“I want to help too,” said Martin recklessly. 

Then Jon surprised him. “Martin, you stay up here.” 

“Agreed,” said Sasha.

Secretly, a small, creeping part of Martin was relieved not to have to face the dark himself. The rest of him hated to see the others putting themselves in danger without him, and he said, “I’m not just going to sit here while you --”

“Martin. Your ankle’s still injured. You can’t climb into whatever tunnels are down there. That’s final.” Sasha’s tone brooked no further objections. 

Jon said, “Your job can be to warn the castle if things go really wrong.”

“That’s not comforting, Jon,” Martin shot back.

“I wasn’t going for comforting.”

“I can’t believe you two,” Tim snapped at Martin and Sasha. “You can’t fight something like this. You’re just throwing your lives away for no reason at all.”

Jon seemed to have decided to ignore him. To Sasha, he said, “We’ll need torches. Lots of them. As much iron as we can find. And something to make smoke: maybe some green wood to burn?”

“We should be able to make torches in the smithy,” Sasha noted. “Can you get the green wood?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. If I keep it damp, it should make even more smoke.”

“Sasha!” A note of real desperation was creeping into Tim’s voice.  _ “Please don’t do this!”  _

In the stillness that fell after Tim’s plea, Martin fancied he could have heard a pin drop. Sasha turned to him, seeming to be gathering herself to say something. 

A rumble sounded from below.

Martin saw the same expression mirrored on his companion’s faces, and he figured he must be making it as well. A tremor ran through the ancient flagstones. Closely following came the horrible, familiar sound: popping, scraping, clicking. Now it was louder and Martin could hear it more clearly and there was another quality to it, too: it was the sound of a hundred thousand things  _ writhing  _ in the earth.

“Shit,” Jon whispered. An almost simultaneous “Oh fuck” came from Tim.

“Everybody stay quiet,” Jon said. “When I give the word, Tim, Sasha, get yourselves and Martin out of here. Martin, no arguments. When they come through, I’ll hold them off as long as I can. You try to get as many people out as you can.”

“Fine by me,” Tim hissed.

“Okay,” said Jon. His head was tilted slightly to one side as if listening intently. “Three... two...”

He never got to “one.” A crack of shattering stone came from the corridor, in the direction of Sasha’s office, and now, instead of muffled, the sound from beneath was clear and sharp, and suddenly Martin could smell it: a scent like the entire earth in decay. The thing must have broken through the floor outside the office. There was no iron door in its way, nothing to so much as slow it down.

“Run!” Jon shouted. Tim and Sasha both looked back for a moment, and Martin met their eyes and saw the raw terror there, the same as he felt himself. The difference was, Martin couldn’t run. He’d never get away in time.

“Get out of here! Now!” 

And they did. The stairs leading up to the rest of the castle were on the opposite end of the corridor from Sasha’s office, and they disappeared around the door, bolting hard towards the exit. 

“I’ll get help!” Sasha cried as she went. Martin wondered what help she could possibly bring that would make a difference.

In the wake of Tim and Sasha’s escape, the noise and the scent strengthened, and Jon backed up until he was stood in front of Martin, facing the door. Martin was too afraid even to scream.

A shadow on the far wall of the corridor. Flowing, squirming feet deep. Whispering, clicking, oozing. The thing beneath the castle came to them in all its many boneless forms and tiny hungry jaws. Any moment now it would appear in the doorway and rush into the library. They’d be trapped. 

“Jon? What do we do?”

Jon said nothing.

“Jon?  _ Jon!” _

“Get ready to fight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh.


	10. Songs of Decay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One, The Water Horse, continued
> 
> Jon and Martin face the thing from beneath the castle.
> 
> CW: canon-typical worms, burns, suffocation and smoke inhalation, mind control, isolation, emotional manipulation

“Jon? What do we do?”

What a question. The stench was getting stronger; surely even the mortals could smell it now. Their only escape route was effectively blocked. They were trapped in a room where the only available weapons were iron, and would burn him as much as they did the worms. And he’d failed to protect Martin. 

“Jon?  _ Jon!”  _ The raw fear in Martin’s voice snapped him back through the litany of  _ failure failure failure failure. _ Focus. Martin still needed him. “Get ready to fight,” he said, because he could think of nothing else to say. 

Martin got to his feet, still bracing against his crutch. Not for the first time since the rescue in the hills, Jon looked at him and wished that becoming fey had given him any actually useful powers whatsoever. Like healing, for example. Hell, he’d have taken anything at that point: teleportation, or predicting the future, or the raw power to stand up to entities like the one currently about to round the corner into the room. But no, he’d never be so lucky. The universe was worse than indifferent: it often seemed to have it out for  _ him, _ specifically. 

“Stay behind me,” he said. They were stood towards the entrance to the northern stacks, facing the only door to the library, with the semi-darkness of the stacks at their backs. At least the worms wouldn’t be able to flank them, unless they made another tunnel under their feet and came up into the northern stacks. He couldn’t hear them moving under this section of floor, so he decided it was unlikely that they’d burst through behind him and Martin any time soon. A thought struck him that would very likely end badly, but it was the only chance he could see. 

“Grab something iron,” he told Martin. “And give me your jacket.”

Martin was already hastening to comply. Jon stretched his hand out behind him for the jacket, keeping his eyes on the doorway. 

The first shimmer appeared around the edge of the doorframe. Pale, silvery, and undulating, about half the size of a person’s little finger. Then another followed it, and another after that, and then dozens and hundreds, exponentially more every second. They spilled into the doorframe, a carpet, a rising tide. As they came, Jon began to hear, underneath the awful squelching and squirming and the gnashing of thousands of minute teeth, something rhythmic. A song. 

He didn’t know the tune but he recognized the style. Faery song, but not the music of the hills and waters, not the music Jon danced to. This was of places underground, warm rotting soil, spores on the wind. It was of bloated carcasses and buzzing flies and all things mouldering away, all things returning, at last, to the home that gave birth to them. The home that gave their lives and called forth their deaths. It welcomed him.  _ Come home to us, little kelpie. Come home come home come home _

Jon focused on his own music and tried to drown out the whispering chorus of the hive. He didn’t belong to the world of decay. He was a creature of skies and waters and stones, open space, blood and stolen breath. Storms and winds, the relentless rain and snow, ice in winter, the pebbles on the shore, the rhythm of waves and tides. He kept his metaphysical feet under him, just. He held to his own melody by the barest of margins, but hold he did, and the wide world that sang him into being heard him and kept him safe, from this at least. The worms could still destroy him -- immortality only went so far -- but they couldn’t change what he was, not yet. 

Something brushed his hand. Martin, passing him his jacket. Jon promptly rolled it up, wrapped it around his right hand, and, moving quickly so he wouldn’t have time to think twice, he grabbed one of the iron sconces, candles and all, from the wall. 

He couldn’t have used his own vest, as it was made of pure glamour, like all his clothing, and would dissolve at once at the touch of iron. Martin’s honest-to-god wool, thankfully, didn’t burst into flames. His hand didn’t instantly burn. But the closeness of the iron made his eyes water, as if from smoke, and his mouth felt dry and papery. Most of the candles fell from the sconce as soon as he lifted it, but a couple that were particularly well wedged in managed to stay put, and he brandished the improvised torch towards the worms in the doorway.

“Get back!” he shouted.

In the corner of his eye, he watched Martin drop his crutch and pick up one of the nearby iron candelabras. He did an awkward limping hop over to Jon. In his right hand he gripped the iron; his left fell on Jon’s shoulder for balance. The warmth and presence of him were suddenly so close in a way Jon was not even slightly prepared for, and despite everything, he was trusting Jon to hold him up. 

“I’m right behind you,” he said. 

The worms rippled across the floor. They didn’t seem particularly rushed. Perhaps they understood they had all the time in the world and Jon and Martin at their mercy. 

“Don’t come any closer!” Jon ordered, pathetically. They weren’t going to listen to him. They had every advantage. He and Martin might be able to take a few out with well-time swipes of their weapons, but it would be like trying to hold back the ocean with a stick. He saw now just exactly how hopeless it would have been for him to go down beneath the castle by himself to fight this thing. 

_ Come home come home come home _

“That’s not going to work!” He tried to say it with more conviction than he truly felt. 

_ Come home, you’ll never be alone again _

_ Come home, you’ll always have a place with us _

“Shut up!” Jon yelled. He swung the sconce at the oncoming worms menacingly. They continued to ripple through the doorway. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands were right here, right now.

_ Come home _

_ Come home _

Martin’s grip tightened on Jon’s shoulder. “Jon, I  _ hear _ them.”

_ Come home, we’ll always love you _

_ Come home, we’ll always need you -- and isn’t that the same thing? _

“Don’t listen!” Jon grabbed him by the shoulder and did his best to shake him. Their relative sizes made it a challenge, but he was damned if he was going to let Martin fall to this thing. He should have guessed Martin would be susceptible to this song. He’d been hearing faery music in his dreams, and that couldn’t be a good sign. Something, or many somethings, had plans for him, and now this creature wanted him too. 

Martin shook his head. “It’s so loud.”

“Martin,  _ please,  _ look at me. He shifted himself so he could look Martin in the face, uncaring for a moment that he was partially turning away from the worms. “Martin. Look at me.”

Martin’s eyes were unfocused. “...Never be alone...”

“Hey, Martin. Listen.” Jon snapped his fingers in front of Martin’s face. “Listen to me. I’m here.” With his left hand, the shoulder on which Martin was leaning, he reached up and grabbed Martin’s cheek. His fingertips dug in, like maybe if he held on hard enough, he could keep Martin from slipping away. “I’m right here. You’re not alone.”

“...Jon?”

“Stay with me. Stay with me.” He cast a glance back over his shoulder at the worms, still making their slow, dreadful approach. He waved the sconce at them, but because he was still turned to face Martin, he fumbled the motion and the jacket slipped just enough so that his thumb pressed into the iron.

He gasped. It was a burning sensation, worse than any he’d had while mortal. Beyond and on top of the pain, there was a sense of something purely inimical, as though the iron itself hated him and wanted to burn him until there was nothing left. He hastily adjusted his grip, but now he could feel that the jacket wouldn’t hold back the iron’s spiteful touch forever. It was only insulation, like a cloth used to handle a pot over the coals. Already he could feel the prickling of the metal beneath, and sooner or later, the fabric shield would fail him. 

Very well. That was a problem for the future. First, he needed to get Martin through the next ten seconds. 

Jon stood on his toes, twisted round, so close he could feel Martin’s hair brushing across his lips, and whispered into his ear,  _ “Martin Blackwood, stay with me.” _

Martin jumped under him as though shocked. Jon pulled away in alarm, but he saw at once that Martin’s eyes were now focused and clear. Off-balance, he threw his arm all the way around Jon’s shoulder for support. With his other hand, he once again raised the candelabrum at the worms. 

“I’m not listening to you!” he shouted at them. 

Jon’s sconce had lost all its candles, but Martin’s candelabrum still had a couple burning in its sockets. As he lifted it, it nearly brushed against one of the bookshelves. All that paper, bone-dry and ready to go up...

“We’ll burn this whole place down!” Jon said desperately. In that moment it was no lie; his only reservation would be finding a way to get Martin out, but beyond that, the whole damn castle could be gutted for all he cared. 

He didn’t expect the threat to work. The worms had them right where they wanted them. Even if he started a fire, there would be plenty of time for the worms to devour them and retreat up the stairs without losing too many of their numbers. But the worms stopped. They didn’t retreat, but they came to a halt, six feet or so away from Jon and Martin. 

“Afraid of fire, are you? That book was right about you.” He slowly put down the iron sconce before it could burn him again. Martin still held his own candelabrum with its few remaining lit candles. 

“Come any closer, or try that singing again, and he’ll light up the books.” He still couldn’t quite believe the threat worked -- if Martin lit the papers, the worms would have plenty of time to escape before the library really started burning. So why weren’t they attacking?

It made no sense, unless --

For some reason, the worms wanted the library preserved.

Jon looked over at Martin, who was glancing between the worms and the stacks, perhaps reaching similar conclusions. 

“What do you want from this place?” Jon demanded. “Why attack? Is it Bouchard?”

The worms, predictably, made no answer. Even their singing was soft, quiet enough that Jon didn’t need to fight it. 

“What’s so important in here?” Martin wondered aloud.

“Let’s figure that out if we survive,” Jon said. 

They’d reached an impasse. The worms couldn’t advance, not without Martin lighting up the stacks. Martin and Jon couldn’t leave. Somewhere out there, Sasha and Tim were hopefully getting as many people out as possible -- ideally, not including Bouchard in his tower. Martin and Jon could buy them some time, at the very least, and perhaps enough time for Jon to figure out an escape plan from the library. But there was a time limit. In the end, the candles would burn down, and they couldn’t reach the replacements Sasha kept near the entrance. A candle near the other end of the room guttered and went out. Not even the oil lamps would last forever. The darkness would take them and the worms would follow. 

“Martin, can you hold them off for a moment?” Martin nodded and Jon backed a short ways into the stacks, away from the door and the worms. He picked up an oil lantern, the only one in this section of the library, and brought it forward. Its handle was blessedly tin, so he didn’t even need Martin’s jacket. 

He picked up Martin’s fallen crutch and laid it near where Martin was stood, a little awkwardly, on one and a half working legs. Martin went back to bracing himself against Jon’s shoulder, and Jon held up the oil lantern. 

“What do we do know?” Martin asked.

“We wait. Maybe Sasha really did find some help.” Jon wasn’t holding out much hope, but he didn’t want to say that aloud to Martin, and besides, there wasn’t much choice in the matter. “Maybe you should have a seat?”

“What, with all them?” He gestured at the worms.

“They’re not coming any closer any time soon. Rest your ankle.”

He helped Martin over to a nearby stool. They dragged it to the center aisle of the northern stacks, near where they’d originally been standing, where they could keep an eye on the worms. Jon stood at Martin’s side and held the oil lantern threateningly at the worms. The stability of the stalemate, and thus their survival, depended on their ability to smash the lantern and start a fire before the worms could lunge and devour them both.

For a minute, the only sound was the writhing of the worms and their faint, fetid song. It was quite frankly nauseating. Jon quickly decided he couldn’t take much more of it. He had to do something to combat the noise, so he figured that he and Martin might as well talk. To start off, he said something that had been weighing on his mind. 

“Martin, I think I need to thank you.”

“What for?”

“You’ve always been kind to me, even before you knew who I really was, and... I wasn’t always kind in return. I’m sorry for that.”

“Oh. Um, apology accepted, but it’s very understandable.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“Maybe?” Martin looked deeply uncomfortable. Jon wracked his brains for a different, less painfully awkward topic. What did Martin like?

“So. Tea?”

He cringed internally as soon as he said it. He’d always been terrible at small talk and a couple years of near-isolation had done him no favors. But it was too late to take back.

“Er, yes? What about it?”

“You like tea, right?”

“...Yes...”

“What’s your favorite kind of tea?”

Martin shot a nervous look at the worms before continuing. “There’s this nice black tea I used to get from a shop round the corner from my flat.”

“In London?”

“Yeah, when I first came to London.”

“Where are you from originally? The North?”

“Accent gave it away?”

“Pretty much.”

“I grew up in a small town. Nothing really went on there. It wasn’t even a nice small town, just a boring one. I got out and went to London as soon as I had the chance.” He fidgeted as he spoke and kept one eye on the worms. “Jon, this feels kind of... weird, to be talking in front of, you know,  _ them.” _

“We’ll be here for a while. I couldn’t stand their noises, and I thought we might as well talk. But if you don’t want to --”

“No, it’s okay.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Okay. So then, how did you end up all the way out here?” He remembered Martin on the shore, scared and confused and saying  _ truth is, I’ve got nowhere else to go.  _ He worried he might be prying, but he was genuinely curious. 

“I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. No money to pay my way back to London. If I left, I’d have nothing.”

“Bouchard’s got you trapped too.”

Martin smiled joylessly. “You could say that. You know, he makes everyone sign really long contracts when they take a job. The more I get to know this place, the more I regret not reading it properly.”

Not reading it? Jon went a little cold at the thought. He’d been that stupid once, probably still was stupid in many ways, but he’d learned the hard way that you never give Elias Bouchard any room to set his own terms, especially not concerning matters of contracts and employment. What kinds of hellish clauses had he slipped in there? Jon had to take a deep breath and remind himself that Martin wasn’t fey and that promises didn’t bind him the way they did faeries. He was human and had a human’s free will. He could lie, go back on his word, forswear an oath. Bouchard couldn’t trap him the way he could Jon. No halter in the world could bind him.

Still, he said to Martin, “You might want to find out what’s in that contract.”

“What do you think he could do to me?”

“I’ve no idea, but I’d rather you be safe.”

“Yeah,” said Martin, “except I somehow don’t think he’ll just show it to me if I ask.”

“We’ll need to find a way to get hold of it.”

“We?”

“I’ll help you, if you want it.” He had no idea how. 

“Thank you.” A beat, and then: “Jon, what was that song just now?”

“It was the sound of whatever  _ that  _ is.” He stuck out his oil lamp, both as a pointing gesture and as a reminder to the worms that he could burn the library whenever he chose. “They make the music, or it makes them, or perhaps both; I’ve never been clear.”

“Why could I hear it?”

“You’ve been dreaming of faery song, so even though this is a different tune, I’m guessing it means you’re susceptible in some way.”

“Fantastic.” 

“Let me know if it gets too overwhelming again.”

“I will. I’m okay for now. What you did worked.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Is it the same kind of music you were telling me about? When you first woke up after you, um, after you died?”

“Let’s say it’s the same genre.”

“Do you still hear your music?”

Yes. Of course. Every second of every day. He ignored it most of the time, but it was always there, ever-changing and ever the same, still playing a tune somewhere at the back of his mind. He told Martin, “Yes.”

“Is it at least a good song?” There was a brave attempt at a smile.

“Sometimes.” This was true. Sometimes it was a song of calm waters and clear skies. Other times, it was a wordless elegy for things he could never have again. And sometimes it was a bloodthirsty cry that called him to the hunt.

It was Martin’s turn to back off, sensing Jon’s mood. “So, do you like tea?”

They talked as best they could of smaller things. The landscape around the loch and the state of the library, tea and castle gossip. Every moment, they were both conscious of the eyes of the worms upon them, on the shortening of Martin’s candles, and on the limited supply of oil in the lamp. With every second stretched out and distorted by fear, Jon lost track of time. All he and Martin could do was talk and hope for rescue. 

He wondered if any of the worms had bypassed the library and headed up the stairs. He heard no screams from the rest of the castle, so perhaps they were waiting to finish off Jon and Martin first before tackling the upper floors. Any why not? With Daisy gone, and the rest of the castle guard mortal, who would have a prayer of standing against them?

Martin’s candles left puddles of wax on the floor. One by one, they went dark. Jon searched for more in the northern stacks with Martin to keep watch, but the few he found were in no better shape. Eventually, he got tired to the point of sitting on the floor, propped up against Martin on the stool, one hand still rested on the oil lamp. The proximity of all this iron for the better part of the day, plus his own burn from earlier, were wearing on his glamour. He wrapped it as tight around himself as he could. He needed working hands and a working tongue for this. 

Every so often, the worms would test him. They’d try to creep a little closer or their song would start to climb in volume and draw him and Martin in. Each time, he’d wave the lantern at the nearest bookcase and they’d retreat. But mainly they were predatorily patient. They merely bided their time until the flames went out. 

“What’ll happen after we beat them?” asked Martin. Jon heard the unspoken  _ if  _ in his statement. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know. Bouchard will probably want me back in the loch.”

“What do  _ you  _ want to do?”

He couldn’t see Martin’s face from this angle. He was glad of it, too. “I think I’d like to keep working in the library.”

“Really?” Martin’s voice leapt. He almost sounded happy.

“If you’ll have me, and if Bouchard doesn’t object.”

“I’d love to -- I mean, it’d be great to have you stay.”

If they could make it out of here, in the infinitesimally slim chance that they survived this, Jon realized that he really, truly, wildly did want to keep working with them: Sasha, ever-competent; Tim, angry but nothing Jon couldn’t work around; and Martin. 

They only had to get out of here alive. 

The stalemate dragged on. The worms encroached closer, evidently sensing approaching victory. The last of Martin’s candles went out, and the only light around came from Jon’s oil lantern. Martin still held onto his candelabrum, but only as a blunt weapon in case the worms decided to charge. 

Distantly, Jon caught the sound of running footsteps and shouting. It seemed to be coming from upstairs. Had the worms finally attacked the upper floors?

“Do you hear that?” Martin asked.

“Yes.” Jon’s hearing wasn’t quite as good under glamour as it was in his horse shape, so he had to concentrate. A moment later, over the song of decay came a familiar voice. 

“Martin! Jon!”

Jon could smell smoke. It wasn’t the beeswax and tallow smell of candle-smoke, but the deeper scent of woodsmoke. It was green, soft wood, fresh-cut growth turned to the flame. 

“Are you two okay? We’re coming!”

Light began to glow on the far side of the open library door, coming from the direction of the stairs. The worms shifted. For the first time, their song stuttered. But they weren’t beaten; they began to turn back towards the door, and there was a menace to their flowing movement. Their song recovered and became a battle chant. They were back on the offensive.

“Sasha?” Martin called back. “Sasha, what are you doing?”

“I brought help!” 

The smoke was only getting stronger. Martin began to cough. Through the doorway, Jon could see the worms moving towards the stairs. If they’d ignored the upper floors before, they weren’t doing so now. “Get out of here, Sasha!” he screamed. 

Sasha, apparently, ignored him. Instead of a retreat, the light brightened in the hallway and the smoke thickened. He heard a clanging sound of metal against metal and a strange scraping against the walls. The worms surged into the corridor and thinned their ranks in the library, though there were still plenty to block Jon and Martin’s path to the door. 

“Come on!” Sasha called. Something clattered against the hallway stones and a fresh plume of smoke drifted down the corridor. Martin’s coughing continued in earnest. 

Then the worms, in their hundreds, stopped their advance. They halted in the corridor and then, incredibly, miraculously, began to retreat.

“How do you like that?” he heard Sasha shout. From further back in the corridor came another sound, a howl. Jon knew it well. Daisy had returned to defend the castle.

He stood and helped a choking Martin to his feet. He held up the lantern at the worms, and now he could hear real fear in their song. Whatever Sasha and Daisy had done, it was working. 

Step by step, he began to walk forward. The smoke grew thick and choking, and while Jon had no issues holding his breath, Martin was gasping and wheezing. They needed to get out of here soon. 

The worms fell back, first by inches, then by feet. Their music dissolved into a panicked mess. Jon and Martin drove them back, in tandem with Sasha and Daisy in the corridor, until at last they were out of the library entirely. 

When he saw Sasha, the first thing Jon thought was that she looked rather terrifying. Much of her face was obscured by a wet handkerchief that she’d tied around her nose and mouth, presumably to combat the smoke. She brandished an enormous smoking branch, burning smoky and slow. After a moment, he saw that she had strapped several burning branches to an iron poker and was holding it in front of her to clear the corridor with fire and ash and iron, like a rather elaborate and deadly broom. In her other hand she held out another wet cloth to Jon. 

Just behind her was Daisy, eyes shining, teeth bared, ready to howl again. And behind her, Jon was surprised to see Tim, wearing a mask and wielding a burning branch of his own and looking fiercely determined. They’d all come back for Jon and Martin.

Jon took the cloth and helped Martin tie it around his face. Then they both stepped back to let the others clear the rest of the corridor. 

The worms had, as he’d suspected, burst through the floor in front of Sasha’s office. The hole was a couple of feet in diameter, and cracked fragments of paving-stone littered the corridor. Now, the librarians and Daisy chased them back in. Once every last silvery worm had vanished back into the hole. Tim and Sasha dropped their burning branches nearby. The smoke was getting thick enough that the others could barely breathe, and Jon could hardly see, but they felt their way along the corridor and up the stairs and out, at last, into the open air.

Jon went to get them all some water from the kitchen. His eyes stung from the smoke, but he wasn’t coughing and retching like the rest of them, so he figured he was in the best shape. Even Daisy looked slightly ill from the smoke. He found and filled a couple of waterskins and hurried back to the courtyard. He wished he could have made some nice throat-soothing tea, but Martin had made it clear there was no acceptable tea to be had in this godforsaken castle. 

“Thank you,” he said to Daisy as he passed the waterskin around. “You got back just in time.”

“Basira sent the emergency signal after they attacked. It barely reached me, and when it did, I was on the other side of the county. Had to run like hell.” She grimaced. “Horrible little things. I hope they all suffocate.”

“That’s the idea,” said Sasha between gasps. “We were lucky not to be fighting them out in the open, where the smoke could blow away.”

“How did you hold out so long, anyway?” Daisy wanted to know.

Jon quickly explained the stalemate they’d come to with the worms. “I’ve no idea what they wanted with the library, though.”

“Speaking of,” said Daisy, “Bouchard won’t be pleased if all his precious books get smoke damage. It’s going to take a long time to air out that place. No windows.” Jon made a face in response. 

“I’ll take responsibility for that,” Sasha said. “I’m head librarian and it was my idea. And frankly, I don’t care if he does get angry. I don’t care if all his books fall to pieces. We got you two out safely, and that’s what matters.”

“You should care,” said Jon. “And safety’s not what matters to him. Right, Daisy?”

“We can tell no lies,” she said. 

“If he fires me, he fires me,” Sasha went on. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“You’d best hope that firing’s all he does.” Jon leaned back against the castle wall next to Martin, who was slowly recovering from smoke inhalation. His breathing was getting to be even and his cough was dying down. Someone would have to go back for his crutch at some point; they’d not been able to grab it when they escaped the library. 

“What more can he do?” Sasha said. 

“I’m sure he’ll think of something. He’s the sort who always does.” Exhaustion had started to settle in. If it had been an effort to hold onto his glamour before, now it was a struggle. He needed to stay a little while longer, though. “But even so, thank you all. You took a risk for us, and you didn’t have to.”

“Of course we had to,” Sasha said. 

Jon’s eyes drifted over to Tim, who had remained silent. He was standing near the edge of the group and still holding a spare iron poker. Tim had never liked him, though in fairness Jon had never given him any reason to be friendly. He’d made it perfectly clear since learning Jon was a kelpie that he didn’t trust him. That, too, was entirely fair. Yet for all his protests beforehand, he’d still followed Sasha back into the library. He’d still come to save them.

“Thank you, Tim,” said Jon. 

Tim had been staring at the tip of the poker, but now he looked up and met Jon’s eyes. “I thought you’d have sold Martin out to that thing.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was, and it hurt. “I’d never --”

“You didn’t,” Tim interrupted. “So I figure maybe you’re not as bad as the rest of them are. Maybe. You’re going to get another chance to prove it.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of your lot stole my brother. You’re going to help me get him back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And that's Part One completed! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone for reading this and super extra special thank you to everyone who's commented! 
> 
> Part Two will be entitled The Changeling. Stay tuned, my friends...


	11. Stolen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's alliiiiiive! We're back for the start of Part II: The Changeling! 
> 
> Tim is frustrated, Martin tries to fix things, and Jon just might be warming up a little.
> 
> CW: blood, isolation, derealization, loss of identity, dysmorphia, abduction, memory loss, grief.

_He wandered. There was nothing else to do in this place, after all, except lie down and cry, and he’d wrung all the tears out a long time ago. So he walked, and followed his footsteps down the silent corridors. Over him always hung the scent of heavy, wet earth, pressing from above him and below him and on every side. Beneath his feet was packed dirt, and the doors he passed were wooden, set in walls of soil so tightly compacted that he could barely scrape any flecks of dust from their surface._

_He thought maybe he’d been by this way before. The doors looked familiar somehow. But when he tried to open one, it was locked, same as always, and the handles didn’t even budge or rattle in place, no matter how hard he pulled. He had no chalk or pencil to mark his way, so he had no real way of knowing if he’d passed this way, and maybe it didn’t matter, because the light never changed and no turning of the corridor ever led to an unlocked door, to a way_ out.

_He’d lost track of time. That had been the first thing to go, long before his tears. He didn’t feel hunger or thirst and he hadn’t been able to sleep, but what he did feel was tired. Tired in every step, every movement, every breath of stale, damp air._

_Sometimes he did stop and lie down and shut his eyes and drift, unsleeping but unable to go on. But he always stood back up again in time. There was the hope, after all, that maybe the thousand and first door would open, the millionth turning of the corridor would bring a burst of air or a hint of sunlight. He couldn’t quite give up the thought that, if he only looked hard enough, kept wandering long enough, he’d stumble back into the world he knew._

_The world he’d known. The sky. Clear air. Other people. He tried so hard to picture their faces. People he’d known. He thought that some might even be people he cared about. Try as he might, their images and voices and names stayed maddeningly out of reach._

_Where had he come from? He_ had _seen the sky, surely, once upon a time. What had his own name been?_

_He was afraid all the time, even when he was tired, and he sometimes didn’t like the shape of his hands, and when he dared to speak aloud his own voice sounded wrong, like it should have belonged to someone else, and so he rarely spoke anymore, and he was grateful that this place had no mirrors, because he did not want to look into the glass and see a stranger’s face._

_For the ten thousandth time, he came upon a door. But for the first time, the door looked new. Its hinges were a different color, a distinct shade of tarnished brass. Its shape and dimensions looked unique. He was certain he’d never seen it before. Maybe on the other side was the sky or a name -- not just_ any _name,_ his _name. He was certain he’d know it when he heard it. He reached for the handle._

_It didn’t turn. It was just as locked as all the other doors. He resorted to knocking, pounding, banging on the door until his knuckles bled, but it didn’t even shake in its frame._

_He slumped against the wall. Soon enough, he’d keep walking. He’d keep looking. He just needed a rest. Just a quick rest before he carried on. Walking. Wandering._

  
  


“What a mess.” 

Bouchard picked his way through the library corridor. He’d spoken with Daisy and somehow managed to get most of the smoke cleared out -- by magic, Martin guessed -- but the scent still lingered. Charred leaves and broken branches littered the floor and there was a sizable hole in the stones where the worms had broken out near Sasha’s office. Through the dust and ash, he somehow managed to keep his dress shoes immaculate. 

Martin waited with Sasha and Tim by the office door as Bouchard stopped in front of the door to the library. He looked at the rows of soot-blackened shelves with distaste.

“When I asked you to take care of this library, I did not intend that you would burn it down.” 

“Did you consider that we’d get attacked by worms, sir?” said Sasha. 

Martin was torn between deep admiration for his boss and acute anxiety about the risk of reprisal. He believed Jon when he’d said that Bouchard was dangerous and that his displeasure was something to fear. 

Bouchard ignored her tone. “I assure you, you’ve no need to brief me on what happened here. Ms. Tonner has already given a full report.”

It took Martin a moment to connect the dots. Tonner must be Daisy’s second name, or at least, the second name she went by. 

“In that case, sir, I’m sure she told you we only did what was necessary to protect our colleagues.” Sasha wasn’t backing down a step.

“I’m not convinced it would have been necessary had certain individuals performed their duties adequately.” He wasn’t looking at the three librarians present. He meant Jon. Something close to panic gripped Martin: Bouchard could do _anything_ to Jon and he wouldn’t be able to resist. He didn’t think. He only spoke, the words coming out almost before he knew what he was saying.

“Sir, Jon did the best he could. If _you_ don’t give him the proper resources and information for the job, then it’s _your_ fault when things go wrong.”

Bouchard turned to look Martin in the eye. He raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Blackwood, are you aware of the full circumstances of Jon’s being employed in this library?”

“I know what I need to,” said Martin. “So do Tim and Sasha.”

Bouchard looked mildly surprised, but not at all upset. “Well, well. Things have been progressing, haven’t they?”

Sasha spoke up again. “We need Jon to keep working here. In case things go wrong again. Sir.”

“And what does Jon say to this proposal?” Despite the question, Martin didn’t believe for a second that Bouchard cared about Jon’s opinion. 

“He says he’d like to stay,” Martin said. 

Bouchard paused, then smiled, evidently satisfied. “Well then, I expect all four of you back here tomorrow morning, sorting out this mess. Be careful with the pages. Smoke does tend to make them brittle.” Far from being angry about the near-disaster, he seemed unaccountably pleased. Martin couldn’t imagine that was a good sign. 

For now, though, it seemed his inspection was done. He turned and climbed the stairs, leaving the three of them to finish sweeping up all the detritus from the attack.

Daisy had covered the hole in the floor with several large iron skillets, in case the worms got any ideas about coming back. Now that they were gone, she thought she’d be able to perform a few binding rituals and keep them away. The skillets were a holdover until she could gather the needed materials. Martin gave them a wide berth just in case. 

It was slow going, using a broom and a crutch simultaneously, but he kept at it. He kept half an eye on Tim as he worked. His outburst at Jon had apparently quieted him for now and he threw himself into the work of cleaning up. Indeed, he wielded the broom with a bit more ferocity than was strictly called for. Martin took a break from sweeping the hall and asked him, “Are you okay?”

“Just perfect,” Tim said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Please, don’t be like that,” said Martin. “We’re trying to help.”

“Is _Jon_ trying to help?”

“I’m sure he is, and… look, Tim, I’m really sorry about your --”

“Don’t, Martin.” Tim’s voice went cold. “Just don’t.”

Martin nodded dully and went back to sweeping the floor.

When Tim had first made his declaration, he’d stunned Jon. “I’m sorry, your _brother?”_

“Yeah. Danny Stoker. He was -- he _is_ \-- my brother, until one of your friends replaced him with a sick, twisted copy. I’ve read those books now. I know about changelings. My real brother is alive somewhere and we’re going to rescue him.”

Jon was backing away, shaking his head. From this angle, Martin couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the dismay in his tone. “Tim, I’m so sorry, but there’s no getting him back. From what I know about changelings, your real brother is trapped in Faërie, and we won’t be able to get him back.”

“Bullshit.” Tim closed the distance on Jon. He was significantly taller than the kelpie and loomed over him as Jon backed into the castle wall. Martin could now see Jon’s expression: a little sad, a little afraid.

“Tim!” Daisy stepped forward and planted a hand on his shoulder. “Going out and trying to rescue a changeling’s victim is a really bad idea.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that we can’t lie?” Jon said.

“That’s bullshit, too; that _thing_ lied plenty. It said it had always been my brother, that there was no other Danny, and everyone else believed it, but I always knew. I never forgot. So don’t think for a second that you can fool me. I _know_ you can lie.”

“Changelings are special,” Daisy said. “They change the world around them and make their words true. They’re not quite breaking the rules.”

“It’s always some stupid rule with you,” snapped Tim. “Always some reason, always some excuse. You won’t even go into Faërie, the place you come from, to get him back.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Tim,” Jon said, “we just nearly got killed by a fey thing from beneath the castle. Imagine taking on multiple beings ten times more powerful than that, except this time, we’d be in _their_ territory and no amount of burning branches would help us. That’s what it would mean to go into Faërie. And even if we somehow survived, actually finding your brother would be nearly impossible. Faërie’s massive, it doesn’t follow logical rules, and he could be literally anywhere: trapped in a dungeon or a tree or god knows where…”

“He’s my brother! I’m not just going to leave him there!”

“So you’d rather just get us all killed, is it?”

Tim clenched his teeth. For a moment, Martin thought he was going to lunge at Jon, despite Daisy’s restraining hand. Instead, he shook Daisy’s hand off, turned on his heel, and stormed back into the castle. 

Jon slumped against the wall. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and closed his eyes. Martin couldn’t think of anything to say. _Oh, Tim..._

“I suppose that explains a lot,” Jon said, eyes screwed shut as though fighting a headache. 

“Keep an eye on him, will you?” said Daisy. “I don’t want him attracting any attention here.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Jon promised. He slumped a little lower on the stones. “I can’t make any guarantees. He’s volatile.”

“I’ll help,” Sasha chimed in. At that, Jon blinked his eyes open and stared at her. Even Daisy seemed surprised.

“I care about him,” Sasha went on, “and I don’t want him, or anyone else, to get hurt. I don’t think he’s thinking clearly right now.”

“That much is obvious,” Jon grumbled. Then, remembering his manners, “Thank you, Sasha.” He effortfully heaved himself upright, then gave Martin a concerned once-over. “How are you feeling?” he asked, softer than he had been since Tim’s outburst.

Martin’s breathing had steadied. His eyes and throat still ached, but the pain was subsiding. “I’m all right,” he said. 

Jon nodded. “I should go.” He did look awfully gaunt and drained. “See you later.” 

“I’ll walk you down,” Daisy told him. Martin tamped down the impulse to offer to accompany them; without his crutch, he’d need Daisy to help him back to the castle, and he didn’t know how willing she might be. Instead, he just watched them go: Daisy, tall and powerfully-built, cutting a definite contrast with Jon’s slight and short frame. They crossed the courtyard, passed through the gate, and were gone without a further word.

“Come on,” Sasha said when they were gone. “Let’s get you sorted.”

“I’m really fine,” Martin protested. She’d been through enough today and had already saved his life. He couldn’t ask any more of her.

“No, you have just been attacked, you inhaled smoke, and you’re still injured. You’re not fine, Martin, and that’s okay. Let me help you.”

Martin couldn’t argue -- she was, after all, edging uncomfortably close to many of the same thoughts he himself had about Jon. So, rather than make himself a hypocrite, he leaned against Sasha’s offered arm and they headed back inside.

He slept badly. The whispering call of the hive seeped into his dreams, and all he could hear were their slippery voices, crying out in a rotten and proliferating chorus. _Come home..._

He clapped his dreaming hands over his ears, remembering what Jon had told him. “I won’t!” he screamed at the hive as they did their best to sing him off his feet. The music oozed through his fingers, try as he might to block it out. 

He thought of Jon’s hands on his cheek, Jon calling him back, whispering his name in his ear. _Martin Blackwood, stay with me._ The words had shivered through him then, snapping him loose of the music, bringing him back to himself. He repeated them to himself over and over as the dream-time spun by, and at last a loud sound woke him.

It turned out to be Sasha, waking him at dawn. “Bouchard’s here,” she said. “He wants to see us.”

Martin finished sweeping the last leaves into a canvas bag, which Tim wordlessly hoisted over his shoulder and carried upstairs, bound for the castle’s midden heap just outside the walls. He and Sasha had had to make a few trips there, but this should be the last, at least until Daisy managed to seal up the floor. Those skillets looked like ludicrously thin protection, but Daisy had assured them it would take time for the worms to regroup, and by the time they’d gathered their strength again, the reinforced wards would be long in place. 

The thought didn’t seem especially comforting to Martin just then. Especially not now that the hive had found his dreams. 

Staring at it would do no good, he told himself, and he followed Sasha into the library. 

She’d pulled a few books off shelves and was leafing through their contents with extreme care. Soot blackened most of the edges and some of the pages didn’t seem to be bending right. Still, none of the books looked completely ruined, at least not at first glance.

“This is going to slow us down,” Sasha said resignedly. “You have to turn the pages twice as slowly or they’ll break.” As if to demonstrate her point, a corner of the page crumbled under her finger and fell to the floor. 

“At least they’re legible,” Martin said. He headed for one of the near stacks and found himself picking out a familiar title -- a little ashy, but not badly damaged. _Of the Waters and the Wild._ The kelpie illustration on the front was still visible, now darkened so that the horse was nearly the same color as Jon’s water horse shape. 

Sasha made a noncommittal noise as she continued to check through a sample of the books. Martin, unsure what he was meant to be doing, decided to pull up a stool and have a more comprehensive look through this book that had already been so useful. He took care with the fragile pages, handing them by his fingertips as delicately as he could manage. 

He found the section on black dogs near the beginning. _Road predators,_ the book told him. _An omen of ill fortune or death. They track the footsteps of the unwary traveler. Those who come across them rarely return to the world of light and warmth._

Had Daisy always been fey? Or was she like Jon? It wasn’t clear to Martin from what Jon had said, and perhaps Jon himself didn’t know. The description in the book made faery hounds sound malevolent like kelpies, but obviously the fey were capable of choosing not to kill humans, as Jon had chosen. He thought about asking Daisy, but if he was honest with himself, she was a bit too intimidating to approach with questions about humanity and morality.

Martin put the book down as Tim re-entered the library. Martin tried to flash a welcoming smile, but Tim didn’t even look at him, just crossed the library to talk to Sasha about the state of the books. 

Most of the day was simply spent assessing smoke damage: which books and papers would need to be rebound, which needed careful handling, which had survived unscathed. Sasha had been right, Martin thought; it really would take twice as long to go through each book when they had to worry about smoke making the paper brittle. He doubted Bouchard would take it well if their entire collection crumbled away to fragments. 

Jon didn’t come to the library that day. So, after Sasha called a halt to work but before supper, Martin climbed carefully down the path to the shore to find him. 

He was in luck with the weather at least, as he’d managed to catch a break in between bursts of rain. The path was muddy and he nearly slipped once or twice. A high wind had picked up and had scoured the surface of the loch, whitecaps breaking as far as the eye could see. He pulled his jacket close around him and searched the shore. There was no sign of Jon.

Maybe he was underwater? Martin called out softly. “Jon? Are you there?”

For a long moment, he thought he would get no response. Then a dark shape broke the rough surface of the loch and Jon in his equine shape came into the shallows. He shook himself as he reached the shore several yards away, and as he walked, his outline wavered in that now-familiar way, and between one stride and another, he changed form back to human. 

“Hi Jon,” said Martin as he settled himself on his favorite boulder by the shore. 

“Hello.” Jon now appeared perfectly dry, despite just having climbed out of the loch. 

“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” Martin said. After all, Jon had probably been quite comfortable down there in the loch, and he’d gone and dragged him out. 

“Not to worry,” Jon told him. “It’s actually nice to see another face.”

Martin tried not to read too much into that. It was, after all, the smallest possible statement of sociability, and it certainly wasn’t specifically directed at him. Jon was only being polite -- although, coming from Jon, that was a step up from his behavior when they’d first met. 

“How are you feeling?” Martin asked. “You seemed pretty, er, tired yesterday.”

“I’m better, thank you. It was a trying day. How are you?” 

“Oh, I’m better as well. Thank you again for, well, saving my life.”

Jon shifted a little awkwardly, as if unsure how to respond. “Of course.”

“Bouchard says you can come back to work in the library, if you want.” A beat, waiting for a response, but Jon made none. “Do you? Still want to, I mean?”

Finally, Jon said, “Yes.”

“That’s great!” It came out a little too eager, but he couldn’t take it back. Jon, though, rewarded him with a half smile.

“How are the others?”

“Sasha’s all right. Tim, well, he’s… you know. He’s still quite upset.”

Jon exhaled through his nose in what wasn’t quite a sigh. “Understandable, I suppose. I don’t think I handled that particularly well yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, Jon, but are you certain that there’s nothing we can do?”

“It’d be a fool’s errand to try.” Jon sat down cross-legged. “I’ve never even been to Faërie, but from what Daisy says, and what I’ve read, it’s incredibly dangerous. Tim’s brother could be anywhere in there, as I said, and there’s no easy way to find him.”

“Wait, you’ve never been? Where is Faërie, anyway?”

Jon gestured vaguely at the loch, the castle, the shore, the sky. “It’s everywhere in a way. Faërie lies parallel to this world. The folktales would say that it’s on the other side of the wind, under the hill, behind the moon. Just step through the right door, look through the right mirror, and you’re there.

“It’s a place for faery gentry. The nobility live there and the worms under the castle came from there. Most of the really powerful fey spend much of their time in Faërie, and it’s only us woods fey who live full-time in the mortal world. That means that anyone we’d be likely to come across in Faërie would be much stronger than I am.”

“Do you know how to get there?”

“Theoretically, yes. I’ve never felt particularly keen on trying.”

“And Tim’s brother, he really is alive somewhere in there?”

“Changelings need to keep their victims alive. Something about maintaining the distortion of reality they use to take their places, I believe. They steal their name and leave them in Faërie while the changeling lives their life in the mortal world.”

Martin shuddered. “That’s awful. Why would anyone -- any faery -- even want to steal someone else’s life?”

“Why do kelpies like to drown people?” Jon shrugged. “The universe doesn’t owe us any answers.”

Martin didn’t want to push Jon, who was obviously uncomfortable with the subject, but he couldn’t help proposing, “Maybe we could at least keep an eye out in the library? There might be something helpful there, like with the worms.”

“All right,” Jon said. “I’ll see if I find anything. But I think there’s something else we need to figure out along with that.”

“What do you mean?” Martin asked, but he thought he knew the answer too.

“What did those worms want with the library? And why is it so important to Bouchard?”

“Yeah, how come he’s so invested in getting it cleaned up?”

“There must be some information he wants in there,” Jon said. “We should try to find it first.”

“How did it even get so disorganized if it’s all that important?” Martin wondered aloud. They’d told him the old librarian had thrown it into chaos. Or perhaps…

“Do you think maybe the last librarian messed everything up _on purpose?”_

Jon gave him a sharp look. “Who were they?”

“You don’t know? You were here before me or Sasha or Tim.”

“I never went to the castle in those days. I essentially only knew Daisy and Basira.”

“Oh.” It occurred to Martin that he didn’t even know the previous librarian’s name. “That’s something else we should look into, then.”

“If they wanted the information gone, why not just burn it? Or perhaps they weren’t allowed to, contractually.” 

“We’ll need to ask around. Think Daisy or Basira might know?”

“Maybe. They might not be able to tell us if they did, though.”

“Is everything to do with faeries always this secretive?”

Jon almost laughed. “In my experience, yes.”

“I can ask some of the other staff as well. Someone must know something, if only the old librarian’s name.”

“Good luck,” Jon said. Then he looked up, met Martin’s eyes, and said, “On another note, I think we need to talk about your dreams.”

“Oh.” Martin’s stomach clenched. He didn’t like thinking about all that, especially not with Jon having said he was susceptible in some way to faery song. Not with the hive and the mists chasing him through his sleep. But maybe Jon could help, he told himself. 

“Tell me about what you’ve been dreaming.”

Martin went through it, haltingly, clumsily. He tried and failed to describe the music he heard; any adjectives he could come up with paled in comparison to the songs themselves. But Jon nodded along attentively, only asking the occasional follow-up question. He told Jon about his early dreams of enthralling music, his later dreams when that same tune had changed from ecstatic to horrifying, the new presence of webs and eyes and now the hive. 

“Do you keep any iron with you when you sleep?” Jon asked when he finished.

“Should I?”

“It would be a good precaution. I expect that anything trying to sing to you will have a harder time if you’re grounded with some iron.”

“Why me, though?”

“I’ve no idea. I don’t think these things follow logical rules. Have any of the others reported any dreams like this?”

“I haven’t asked.”

“It might be useful to warn them.”

Martin nodded. “Thanks, Jon.” As he spoke, a drop of windblown rain hit him in the eye. He blinked frantically to clear it when a second drop hit his face, then another. The rain had started up again, and the wind gusted all the stronger.

“Let’s get you back inside,” said Jon. To Martin’s surprise, he found the kelpie helping him to his feet. Jon kept close to him as he started his climb back up the bluffs. Between the wind, rain, and the slippery soil, Martin nearly stumbled once or twice, but Jon was there with a steadying hand.

“Thank you,” Martin said again and again. 

“You don’t need to thank me.”

When they reached the castle gates, Jon stepped back. “Go get some supper and warm yourself up,” he said. 

Martin wanted to say… something. He wasn’t sure what, but as he stood in the shadow of the gates, drenched and shivering, he knew he wouldn’t be able to say it properly, even if he could find the words. So he simply thanked Jon again and turned to head back inside. When he glanced over his shoulder, he watched Jon disappear back into the wind and rain, out in the storm like always, while Martin was going inside to a hot meal and a warm bath and a comfortable bed. It ate at him and he didn’t know if it was possible to fix it.

The next morning, Martin met Jon on the stairway as he came back from breakfast. 

He’d just been considering whether to hike out to the loch and offer to walk Jon in -- although that was silly because with his leg still injured, it’d be more like _Jon_ walking _him_ in -- but Jon preempted him. He was there in his rumpled shirt and vest and his glasses which Martin was entirely sure a kelpie didn’t actually need, but which looked nice on him, so Martin wasn’t going to complain, and he actually smiled at Martin, who, caught by surprise, could only grin back and stammer “Good morning.”

“Shall we get to work?” asked Jon. He seemed to be in a far better mood today.

Down in the library, Martin and Jon entered the room together. Tim and Sasha were already there. They both looked round as Martin and Jon entered: Sasha with a warm expression, Tim with a guarded one.

“Welcome back, Jon,” Sasha said. 

“Thank you, Sasha.”

Tim said nothing at first. Instead he stared pointedly away from Jon and Martin. But it seemed that Jon wasn’t about to ignore what had happened between them.

“Tim,” he said, “I didn’t react well when you told me what happened to your brother. I’m sorry for that, and for what happened to him. I really am.”

“But you still won’t help, right?” Tim replied in an acid tone.

“I still don’t know how it would be possible to save him, but I’ve talked it over with Martin, and we’re going to keep an eye out for any books in here that might be able to help us.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Tim snapped. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s not like I could have done that myself or anything. It’s not like I haven’t been scouring these shelves myself. It’s not like that’s anything that a regular old human being couldn’t do.”

“Tim, I’m…”

Tim cut him off with a waved hand. “Fine, fine. Do what you can, then. Let’s get back to work.”

Martin bit his lip. Why did it always have to be conflict? He could understand where Tim was coming from: he was hurting and he’d thought he’d seen a solution, thought he could save his brother, and now Jon was telling him it was impossible. It was understandable that he’d be angry, but it wasn’t fair of him to take it out on Jon. Still, Martin kept his mouth shut. He didn’t think he could help the situation now. 

Meanwhile, Sasha had taken charge as usual. “All right then. Jon, Martin, can you two start on the Russian translations? Tim, I’d like your help over here with some of these folios. That should do us quite nicely until lunch, I think.” And with that, the four librarians set to work. 

Passing the near shelves on his way to the north stacks where the Russian volumes were, Martin noticed Tim’s book, _The Changeling,_ sitting on a shelf. Maybe Tim had been paging through it again. He looked round but Tim was busy with Sasha in the southern stacks. Martin picked up the book and stuck it in his jacket. He was curious now. He’d have a look in it later and find out just what it was that Tim believed was happening to his brother. 

When he reached the Russian shelf, Jon had already brought out a stool for him. Martin took a seat and was about to thank him, but Jon had already turned away and was pulling volumes off the shelf, apparently absorbed in the work. 

Martin smiled, and opened the nearest book to begin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	12. Reunions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part Two, The Changeling, continued
> 
> Jon catches up with some old friends.
> 
> CW: manipulation, dysmorphia, drowning, graphic animal death, mentions of suffocation.

Sasha called an end to the workday just as the sky began to darken and the rain to fall again. There were no windows in the library, but Jon knew it all the same. Even through stone and earth, he could faintly sense the coming night.

He put down the Russian dictionary he’d been working with all day. Beside him, Martin stretched out his shoulders and stood. They hadn’t had time to work out any of the questions they’d come up with the previous day, and in between tasks, Jon had suggested they wait for Daisy to finish binding the hole in the floor before they started asking about the old librarian. No need to take chances with a potentially risky investigation before their defenses were properly repaired. 

Jon stood and adjusted his glasses. As he did, Tim emerged from the southern stacks and gave Jon a look that, if not welcoming, was at least not openly hostile. He didn’t need Tim to like him, but in the interest of a collegial work environment, he responded with a polite smile. Tim just stalked past him on his way out of the library.

“How did you two get on?” Sasha asked Jon and Martin.

“We’re making headway,” said Martin. In Jon’s opinion, that was something of an exaggeration. Not only were the books in Russian, but many were in some obscure dialect that varied significantly from what was in the dictionary, and that had slowed their progress to a crawl. Martin had been more patient than Jon as they struggled to piece together titles and subject matter. 

Jon didn’t contradict him. He largely kept quiet as Martin and Sasha discussed possible work-arounds and ideas for how to proceed, only interjecting once or twice to offer an idea. Sasha clearly knew far more about the work of a librarian than either he or Martin did. When they’d finished, Sasha bid them both goodbye and headed out, presumably to follow Tim.

Now Martin was looking at him. He ought to say something. “I’d best be going,” he began, just as Martin started to speak as well. They cut one another off. Jon waited a moment for Martin to pick up where he’d left off, but from how his gaze was darting around the room, looking at anything but Jon, it didn’t seem like he was about to continue. 

“I should go,” Jon repeated, for lack of anything better to say.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” said Martin. “Um. I’ll… walk you up?”

“No need to trouble yourself,” said Jon quickly. That ankle still had to heal.

“It’s on the way.”

“...All right, then.”

They climbed the spiral staircase to the ground floor together, Jon matching Martin’s careful pace. He tried desperately to come up with a topic of conversation so they weren’t just walking in silence, but everything he could think of was either too long, too charged, or too dangerous. This was nearly as bad as when the worms had them cornered. 

“How’s the ankle?” he managed.

“Getting better, thanks.”

“Glad to hear it.” 

At last they reached the ground floor and the short hallway to the courtyard door. Martin waited on the landing, as he’d need to climb another flight to get to the dining room.

“Are you okay to get up the rest of the way?” Jon asked, and instantly regretted it. Of course Martin was, he’d been doing it for a while now, and he certainly didn’t need Jon worrying over him. 

Martin nodded. “I’ll be fine. Er… good night, Jon.” He looked about as awkward as Jon felt, and it was with some relief that Jon said his brief goodbyes and headed out into the rain. 

It was cold and hard, coming down in blustery sheets. At once his glasses became more of a hindrance than a help, blurring the world through a sheet of water, and he let them dissolve into unglamoured nothingness. He was getting better at that these days, at letting just one aspect of his glamour fall while leaving the rest intact. Glasses gone, he didn’t mind the rain so much. He was long since accustomed to it, and besides, the sudden shock of wind and water on his face was a welcome distraction.

Martin. Why did he always have to have that bright and hopeful expression? Why did he always have to be so  _ kind?  _

Jon shook his head. Perhaps the rain wasn’t enough of a distraction after all. No good could come of that line of thinking, he knew, and he gritted his teeth and walked into the gale.

Daisy was stood by the gate. It wasn’t quite sunset, but the weather was wild enough that she was likely planning to close up early. Odd things came out to play in storms like this. Jon ought to know, being one himself. He waved to Daisy as he approached.

“Jon.”

“Daisy, I don’t mean to rush you, but do you think you could mend the hole in the library corridor? It’s dangerous down there as is.”

Daisy glared at him. “It’s not so easy to gather the needed materials, you know.”

“I’d rather not be attacked again.”

“Yeah. Should be ready tomorrow, actually. Now get out of here and let me do my job.”

He raised his hands in surrender as he passed the iron doors. “Okay. Sorry.”

“Hmph.” Almost casually, she swung the heavy doors shut in his face.

The wind picked up its howling. Jon turned from the castle and made for the loch. As he walked, he relaxed and let his glamour fall away completely. The change itself felt shivery and disorienting, as if for a split second he ceased to occupy a physical form and moved through the ether instead. Then his feet, all four of them, made contact with the drenched grass and his vision opened in a wide horizontal arc. He tossed his head to flick his forelock out of his eyes. 

This moment at the end of every day was a strange one -- he couldn’t decide how he felt about it. One one level, letting go of his glamour felt like unclenching a muscle that he’d held stiff all day, but on another, this shape still didn’t feel entirely right, either. He’d lived like this for years, yet he still wasn’t fully used to four legs, hooves, or a mane and tail.

He wondered how long it would be until this shape was all he cared to know. He was young in faery terms. After a century or two of blood and drowning, how much of the human part of him would be left? Martin, Georgie, Sasha, everyone would all die in time, and he’d go on existing this way. One day the hunger would get the better of him and he’d bring new prey down with him into the loch, more terrible and more satisfying than any deer or rabbit dragged from the shore. Maybe he’d put on a human glamour to lure them in, but hands and skin and a human voice would be nothing but camouflage to him, like a leopard’s spots, merely a tool of the hunt. 

Bouchard would like that, he suspected. Somehow he doubted Bouchard would die a mortal death, no matter how long Jon waited, and whatever it was he wanted Jon for, his remaining humanity was likely to be more hindrance than help. 

From the bluff he could see his world: the pounding storm and the restless loch and its black, bloody depths. With his sweeping sight he didn’t need to turn to see the castle behind him with its windows lit, glowing with light and warmth. But he ignored it and kept walking until the lakewater closed over his pasterns and hocks and withers, and he finally pinned his ears and dove. 

It was calm and quiet down in the dark. He could still faintly see, even down near the stony lakebed, but he never relied on sight down here. The currents told him what was happening around him. He tracked a school of fish as it passed over his head. From the shore came the distant echoes of wavelets. He’d know if anything touched the water; the loch would tell him. For now, he let the world fade away as he drifted in the cold and the storm raged on.

When someone called to him from the shore, he jolted back to awareness. He flinched hard enough to scatter a school of trout that had been circling him curiously. 

_ “Jonathan Sims…”  _

His ears flicked one way and another until he pinpointed the sound. It was coming from the southern shore of the loch, east of the castle. The voice was soft and slippery, but with an odd harsh quality underneath, like a soft tongue sliding under sharpened teeth. It  _ was _ his name, but the speaker didn’t have it quite right; something in it was off, and Jon heard it, but felt no compulsion to answer. 

Nevertheless, he followed the sound. This couldn’t be good. It was still dark out, dawn hours away, and the voice didn’t sound right for a mortal creature. He considered that he might be swimming out to meet something hungry and far more powerful than he was, but he had to know. There was no true safety in hiding in his loch. He’d have to come out and whatever this was would find him eventually. 

He asked the current to speed him along and it answered enthusiastically. When his feet touched the bottom, he gathered himself in preparation to charge if he must. He did not weave a glamour -- he was stronger in this shape and might have need of his strength. The storm had dwindled, the downpour tapered to a drizzle, and he could see the shore clearly as he advanced through the shallows. 

The thing that had spoken to him from the beach appeared human-shaped. It was wearing a suit and at first, it was facing away from the shore, but as Jon came towards land, it turned to look at him. Despite the weather, it appeared perfectly dry. It had long blond hair and wicked claws in place of fingernails. It was smiling. 

Jon stopped in his tracks. He could do nothing but stand in the water, now only fetlock-deep, and stare. Here was the thing that had effectively fed him to a kelpie. The last time he’d seen Michael, he’d been human. 

Michael grinned wider.

“Why, hello Jonathan,” he said. His voice, now Jon couldn’t be fooled by glamour, was warped and twisted, and so were his eyes. He smelled like nothing human. “Thought I’d stop by and see how you were getting on.”

“What are you doing here?” Jon demanded when he found his voice.

“Didn’t I just tell you?”

“What do you  _ want?” _

“Not very hospitable, are you?”

“Forgive me if I don’t exactly welcome the creature that got me killed.” 

“You know,” said Michael, with a wave of a long-taloned hand, “you really shouldn’t take that so personally. I was just holding up my end of a bargain. I would have done the same to any mortal idiot who turned up in that post office. You just happened to be that particular mortal idiot. In fact, as I think about it, the whole business didn’t turn out so badly for you. You’re still here. You’re alive. Better than that, you’re immortal. Some gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.”

Jon had no intention of engaging with the latter part of what Michael had said, but he’d learned by now to listen whenever a faery mentioned  _ bargains. _

“What kind of deal did you have with that kelpie?”

“Unimportant.” Michael tossed his head dismissively. 

Jon ground his teeth. He noticed his ears instinctively flattening in anger. “Why are you here?” he repeated.

“You’ve made quite a commotion lately. Taking down that worm creature… you’re making a name for yourself. You’ve been  _ noticed.”  _

“By whom?”

“Interested parties.”

He’d forgotten how annoying it could be to talk to the fey. It almost made him have some sympathy for Tim and Sasha when they’d tried to get straight answers out of him before Martin had figured out his secret.

“Are you finished?” he snapped. 

“Just about. I wanted to tell you to take care. Drawing attention is a risky business, Jonathan.”

“You can’t control me with that name.”

“No, it seems you’re spoken for. What a shame that you fell for Bouchard’s little trap so quickly. Still, the new shape suits you, I must say. What does it feel like to drown a living thing?”

Part of Jon wanted badly to charge Michael and run him down. But those claws looked sharp, and the wiser part of him prevailed. Instead, he said flatly, “If you’ve come to gloat, congratulations. All you’ve done is waste my time. Don’t come back here.”

“Manners!” Michael exclaimed. But Jon was already turning away. He could still watch Michael, even behind him on the shore, until he dove beneath the surface. 

Not long before dawn, the hunger set in again.

It had been a week since his last hunt. He did his best to space them out, but it meant that sometimes hunger got its teeth in him, and he knew he wouldn’t last the day at work without something to tide him over. It was quite disturbing to look over at his colleagues and be unable to think of anything except what their final gasps would sound like before their lungs filled with water.

He headed for the northern shore of the loch, as far away from where Michael had called him as he possibly could be, and waited. He knew the patterns of wildlife by now, knew that with the rain having fully slackened off, the herds would be coming down from the hills to drink. 

Submerged, he tracked the shoreline, listening to the waves. Without the background static of falling rain, it was easier to sense when something tentatively broke the water’s surface. It was the tiniest possible disturbance, yet he sensed it, practically tasted the blood in the water already.

He swam closer. A stag lapped the water. He could see from below the rippling outline of its antlers. It was wary in the way of wild things, and Jon could not use glamour to call to it. Animals were not nearly so susceptible to fey magic as humans were. 

Jon chose his moment, called the currents to him, held in waiting with his breath. 

The surface of the loch broke. The heavy tang of fear filled the air. There was a scream, then a thrashing, then a silence once more. Deep beneath the surface, he felt the last breath leave the deer’s lungs and it was hideous and horribly satisfying. 

He left the body on a different shore for the foxes and the ravens. He didn’t need it, and it would only serve to poison his waters, and after the incident with the worms, he didn’t want anything decomposing around him. Let it do good for someone, at least.

By the time he’d finished, it was just past dawn. He crossed the loch in a hurry and stepped back into the open air beneath the castle. He drew himself up, steadied himself, spun his glamour back into place, adjusted his glasses. He couldn’t taste blood anymore. All in order.

Jon climbed the trail up the bluffs back towards the castle. He nodded to Basira standing near the gate. A few other staff members were in the courtyard even at this hour, at the smithy or the stables, and as usual, they gave him a few odd looks as he passed. Doubtless they wondered where he could possibly be coming from every morning, but most of them had lived long enough in this area to know when not to ask. He didn’t meet their eyes. 

Entering the castle, he momentarily considered heading upstairs to the staff dining room to find Martin and the others. He lingered for a moment in front of the staircase before deciding against it. The stares of the rest of the staff, their whispers behind his back, weren’t worth it. He’d see his colleagues soon enough in the library. He made his way downstairs instead.

As he descended the spiral staircase, he noticed a faint aroma of smoke. This wasn’t the woodsmoke from when the worms attacked: it was sharper than that and it irritated his nose. He sneezed twice near the bottom of the steps. 

In the hallway was the explanation: Daisy, knelt over the hole in the flagstones. She had her back to Jon and he couldn’t quite see what she was doing, but whatever it was, it was producing a stream of bluish, acrid smoke. Sasha stood on the opposite side of the hole, apparently unbothered by the smoke. She nodded to Jon when she noticed him on the landing.

Jon coughed as the smoke stung his nose. “Daisy, what are you doing?” He braced himself against the nearby wall.

“Nearly done. Go outside if it’s bothering you.” She didn’t turn to look at him. 

He wanted to stay and get a look at what she was doing, but another coughing fit drove him back up the stairs. It didn’t matter if he tried to hold his breath; whatever Daisy was burning found its way in regardless. Eyes watering, he leaned against the wall of the ground floor corridor and waited.

“Jon? Are you all right?”

He blinked back the tears. Martin had evidently finished breakfast and come to find him. That look of genuine concern always threw Jon off. It had been so long since anyone looked at him that way.

“I’m fine. Daisy’s doing something down there, and whatever it is, it doesn’t agree with me.”

“Is Sasha --”

“She’s still down there. I expect she’s doing fine. The ritual isn’t meant to keep mortals out.”

“Oh. Shall we get some air?”

And this time, it was Martin, now walking more comfortably, helping a coughing Jon out into the courtyard. Jon ignored the wary looks of the other staff. He drank in the clean air and slowly, his breathing became regular and his eyes clear. 

“I suppose,” he said once he had recovered, “this means that Daisy’s binding is going to work.”

“Will you be able to go down there once she’s done?”

“Yes. She would have told me if I couldn’t.” He was fairly sure this was true. Daisy might be the laconic sort, but she would have informed him if he’d be unable to do his job from now on. Probably. 

“Well, that’s good.” A brief pause, then, “It’s a delivery day today.”

“Fantastic.” Jon wasn’t looking forward to Breekon and Hope’s visit. On top of the poisoning and predation, they smelled horrible. 

But Martin had thought of something Jon hadn’t. “Georgie and Melanie might be coming back.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t looking forward to that, either. He and Georgie had been close, but that had been several years ago, and now, just seeing her made Jon feel guilty. He’d completely vanished from his former life, and although it was true he had few close connections, he  _ had  _ left some people behind, wondering what had happened to him. 

Martin must have sensed something of his mood. “Is that going to be okay with you?”

“I’ll have to face her sometime. No sense putting it off.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

Martin, evidently, wasn’t going to let Jon get out of his questions that easily. Why did he have to be so perceptive? “I’ll be fine.”

“You say that a lot.”

“It’s true.”

He didn’t have to make a reply to Martin’s concerned and slightly skeptical look -- he  _ was  _ fine, it wasn’t a lie, he could say it aloud and that made it true -- because at that moment, Daisy strode through the door into the castle courtyard. She nodded to Jon and Martin.

“Is it safe to go back down?” asked Martin.

“It’s all done,” she said. “The smoke’s gone as well.”

“What was that stuff?” Jon wanted to know.

“Byproduct of sealing the hole in the floor,” Daisy told him.

“How did you not suffocate?”

“I had the sense to prepare myself.”

“Could you have warned him at least?” said Martin.

Daisy frowned. “Sorry, I guess. It’s done now. You can go back to work.” And with that, she turned and made for the gatehouse. Jon and Martin went back inside, down the spiral staircase, and into the library.

Jon didn’t eat lunch with the other librarians -- mortal food held no appeal for him anymore. But today was delivery day, and so his colleagues grabbed sandwiches rather than sitting down to eat, and they all gathered in the courtyard to await the arrival of the delivery wagon. 

Of course, that meant that all the other castle staff were here too, and more than a few recognized Jon as the odd worker who turned up at dawn and left at sunset as the gates closed. Probably, rumors of what had happened with the worms had made the rounds, and while no one addressed the librarians about it openly, Jon could feel their stares when they thought he wasn’t looking. How many of them recognized him as something inhuman?

Not long after the staff assembled, the familiar creaking and jangling of the delivery wagon sounded from the greenway. As always, he hung back from Breekon and Hope themselves. The reek of faery and blood and cold earth was strong on them, even from thirty feet away. He didn’t know what they were exactly, but had no desire to find out. Jon was a bit relieved to see that none of the other librarians stepped up to join the queue to purchase or receive deliveries.

And of course, Martin had been right. Georgie and Melanie had ridden in on the back of the cart, alighted, and picked their way through the thin crowd. Had Martin mentioned the dangers of trusting Breekon and Hope when he’d explained Jon’s situation? Either way, Jon would need to warn them again. No matter what kind of deal they thought they had with the deliverymen, they weren’t safe riding with them. 

He watched Georgie as she approached. She had obviously seen him, but her expression was hard to read. It certainly wasn’t welcoming. He supposed he deserved that. He could have tried harder to get word south that he wasn’t dead, but what good would that have done? She wouldn’t have believed the truth, and he couldn’t fabricate some elaborate lie that would have allayed her suspicions. Still, she had every right to be angry with him. 

Martin drew alongside Jon as the two reporters approached. Sasha stood at his other side, and Tim beside her, arms folded. Jon doubted Tim would want to take his side if it came to a conflict, but at least he was here, and he figured Tim would follow Sasha’s lead. 

Georgie drew up, squared her shoulders. “Hello again, Jon.”

“Hello Georgie.”

“How have you been?”

“Fine.” He could almost hear Martin:  _ you say that too much, Jon.  _ “It’s been an eventful few days since you last came here. And you?”

“We’ve been talking, Melanie and I. Can we discuss this somewhere more private?”

Jon nodded. “Come down to the library?” Sasha offered.

“Isn’t that against the rules?” asked Martin.

“Don’t tell Bouchard, then,” said Sasha. Jon had to admire her guts, but he didn’t think crossing Bouchard was a good idea. It was only liable to get her, and by extension the rest of them, in trouble. But he followed nonetheless as she led the reporters into the castle and down the stairs. Later, he’d have to have a talk with her, try to encourage her to be at least marginally less cavalier about open disobedience. 

The hole in the floor had been sealed, but the paving stones didn’t quite look right anymore. In the place where the worms had burst through, the stone seemed to have melted and flowed into place to seal the gap. Luckily the smoke had long since dissipated and all that was left were the familiar library scents of paper and binding glue and iron. The librarians gathered the scattered, mismatched chairs and stools from about the library and set up a small circle to talk.

When they all sat down, Melanie with a hand on Georgie’s knee, Georgie began to speak. “I meant to talk to you, Jon, about what happened, but… you all look odd. You’ve been twitching and jumping since we got here. What’s going on?”

Was it really that obvious? Jon hadn’t noticed. But of course, it made sense, after what they’d been through. Everyone was staring at him, and clearly they expected him to give some kind of answer. How much should he reveal? 

Georgie deserved the truth. He didn’t know Melanie, but if Georgie chose her as a partner, then that spoke well for her. He decided to give them most of the story. 

“We were attacked,” he said, and started to tell the tale of the worm attack. He described how he and Martin had been trapped and how the others, with Daisy along, had come to save them. He left out the part where Martin had heard the worms’ song along with the story of Tim’s brother, as it was not his place to tell those tales. Additionally, he omitted Michael’s visit that morning. He hadn’t even told the librarians about that yet. Perhaps he should… but he hadn’t had enough time to consider. 

By the time he finished, both Georgie and Melanie were watching with wide eyes. “It’s safer now,” he hastened to add. “At least, it’s as safe as Daisy could make it, and I think we did enough damage to the worms that they won’t try again anytime soon.” He thought of Michael on the beach --  _ you’ve been  _ noticed. Safe for now, he thought. Safe  _ for now.  _

“I’m glad you’re all okay,” said Georgie.

“Yeah,” said Sasha. “We all made it. Even the books aren’t completely ruined.”

“Why did the worms attack?” Melanie wondered.

“We don’t know exactly,” Jon said. “We’re looking into it. We think perhaps there’s something in this library that they want, but we don’t know what that could be. They certainly didn’t want me and Martin burning the books.”

The reporters gazed about the library. Georgie asked, “So how do you plan to find out?”

“Look through the books. Ask around the castle.” Jon shrugged. “There are no guarantees, but we don’t have that many other options.” The research would take a long time. They’d have to go digging through old records, talk to the staff…

Then it occurred to him that Georige and Melanie might be helpful, as a pair of investigative journalists skilled in this sort of endeavour, and nearly as quickly, he realized why that would be a horrible idea. “You two should leave,” he blurted out without fully thinking.

Melanie crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at him. He went on hurriedly.

“It’s dangerous. We’ve already been attacked, and we’re under contract here, but you’re not. If you stay, if you get involved, you will draw the attention of terrible things. You should leave.” That came out more bluntly than he intended, and he saw Georgie flinch. He backtracked. “I can’t tell you what to do, but no one’s safe in this castle. No one’s safe in this region. You’d be much safer going back to London.”

Georgie and Melanie exchanged a long look. “We’ll discuss this later,” Melanie said softly.

“Right.” Georgie turned back to face him. “Listen, Jon… thank you for telling us this, and we’ll think about it, but it’s not what we came here to talk about.”

She met Sasha’s eyes, then Jon’s. “Can we have a word in private?”

Jon stood. He pointed to the northern stacks. “Be back in a minute,” he told the others. He led Georgie into the shadows of the deeper library. They’d been in the southern stacks all morning and most of the light sources had been consolidated there, so he picked up one of the tin-handled lanterns and brought it with them. He didn’t need the extra light to see, but he figured Georgie probably did. 

They stopped a short way from where the others were sitting, far enough away that a quiet conversation wouldn’t be heard, but not so far that they couldn’t dash back quickly in an emergency. Jon let Georgie stand between him and the way back, not wanting her to feel like she was trapped in a dark library with a monster she’d once known. 

“What is it, Georgie?” He tried to ask gently.

“I missed you.” 

That took him aback. “You did?” 

“Of course.” There was an edge to her tone, like she wanted to add,  _ you idiot.  _ “You mattered to me, Jon. You still do.”

“Really?” But they’d fallen out, and then Jon had disappeared on her, why would she --

“Yes, really. I worried about you. I thought you were dead, and I mourned for you, Jon.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It wasn’t your fault. What happened to you was awful. I don’t think there was anything you could have done.” Her face softened. “I just wanted to tell you that no matter what happens, I’m glad you’re still here. I’m so, so happy you’re alive.”

Jon hadn’t known what to expect from this conversation, but it certainly wasn’t this. “Um. Well. Thank you Georgie. I’m… I’m glad you came and found me. I’m glad we could see each other again.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, me too. And another thing, Jon: I’m really happy you’re not alone. You’ve always pushed people away, and I think you need them now more than ever. You’ve got people here who care about you, and I’m not just talking about me. Please remember that.”

Why did he almost want to cry? “I will.”

“Good. I have to talk to Melanie and I don’t know if we can stay, things being the way they are, but Jon, if you need anything, if you need a friend in London…” She broke off, almost laughed. “That sounds ridiculous. I do mean it, though. When we go back to London, write to me. Get Daisy and Basira to post it for you.”

He nodded. “All right.” 

“Can I hug you?”

The words hadn’t settled in; he hadn’t processed what she was asking, but all the same he said, “Yes.” And then Georgie was wrapping her arms around him, squeezing just like she used to, harder, and Jon was hugging back and closing his eyes, wanting to memorize every detail of this moment so in the long years to come, he’d always have it with him like a bright touchstone. It was a long hug, but still all too soon that Georgie pulled away and Jon let her go, and she smiled at him, with just a bit of sadness to it.

“The others will be waiting.”

“Okay, then,” he said, and followed her back into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was haaarrd and very much did not want to be written. But it's here now!
> 
> Next time, more plot!


	13. What's Left Unspoken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim turns on the charm, Sasha has a plan, and Martin makes Jon an invitation.

Martin watched Jon and Georgie closely as they returned to the others. Georgie, walking in front, looked somehow relieved and sad at once. Jon, behind her, looked, if not exactly happy, then at least less solemn than usual. The tension he always carried in his shoulders seemed to have let up ever so slightly. What could she possibly have said to him? Martin wished he knew. He wished, foolishly and stubbornly and very, very deeply, that  _ he  _ could be the one to make Jon loosen up. Georgie was an old friend and it was only natural that she’d know Jon in ways he didn’t, but a small and petty part of Martin was bitter about it all the same. 

Georgie patted Melanie on the shoulder, then took her seat next to her. “We’ll have to talk about what we’re doing next.”

“Of course,” Sasha said.

“Will you all be okay?” 

“Yes,” Sasha stated. “We can handle ourselves.”

Martin admired her confidence, but wasn’t sure he shared it. Glancing over to Tim, he saw his colleague’s eyes locked onto Sasha, but his expression was hard to read. Jon was easier; he looked as though he was feeling skeptical and having a hard time hiding it. Of course, Martin was coming to learn that Jon was no good at all at hiding his emotions. 

Melanie began, “Even if --”

A knock on the doorframe. “Hey. Have to interrupt.”

Martin and the other librarians jumped. Irrationally, he half-expected to find a wave of worms washing down through the door. He knew it made no sense, knew worms didn’t  _ knock,  _ but even so, his heart raced. It took him a moment to recognize Basira stood in the door. 

“What’s going on?” Sasha asked. 

“It’s against the rules for non-staff to be in the library without approval.”

“I gave them permission.”

“They’re not your rules, nor mine either. Bouchard’s orders.” She made a face, as though reluctant to play the enforcer, but it didn’t stop her from saying, “I’ve got to break this little gathering up.”

“How I run my library is --”

“-- Not entirely up to you, I’m afraid. I don’t like to do this, but I’ve got a job.” She made a beckoning gesture. “Come on, now. You can finish your chat out in the courtyard if you must.”

Georgie and Melanie exchanged a look. Then, Georgie said, “It’s all right. We’ll be on our way.” They stood and headed for the door.

“Don’t leave before we talk again,” Sasha called out.

“We won’t,” promised Melanie. And then Basira led them away, and the four librarians were left alone among the stacks. 

“So,” said Sasha when the noise of footfalls climbing the stairs had faded, “Bouchard’s caught on and doesn’t want them around here anymore.”

“Seems like it,” Tim agreed. 

“We have to find out what’s going on with him.” Sasha’s eyes were hard with purpose. 

“Just… let’s be careful, yeah?” Tim shot a glance at Jon. “Bouchard is dangerous.”

“On that subject,” Martin broke in, “have either of you been having strange dreams?”

“Like what?” Sasha wanted to know.

Questioned directly, Martin found himself stumbling for words. “Like, like music. Weird, haunted music. Spiders and webs. Worms. Eyes. Stone circles. That kind of thing. You know,  _ fey.” _

Tim was frankly alarmed. “You’ve been dreaming about this stuff?”

“Well, yes. I take it… you haven’t?”

“No.”

“Well, um, that’s probably good.”

Sasha turned to Jon. “Do you know about this?”

“Martin is susceptible somehow. Something’s calling to him through his dreams. I don’t know quite what it is, or why, and it hasn’t done any damage yet, but it is concerning.” 

“I wanted to warn you,” Martin went on, “in case any of you were getting the dreams as well.”

“You said you were dreaming about music? What else?” Sasha leaned forward.

Martin did his best to describe the dreams in more detail, though the words sounded weak and inadequate when spoken aloud. He couldn’t convey the terrifying pull of the dreams, how ecstatic and horrible they were. At the end, he forced himself to say, “And I think it spills over into the real world, too. When I’m awake. I heard some music in the hills that day Jon saved me, and again with the worms…”

“What could they want with you?” Tim wondered. Indeed, Martin himself had been worrying over that very question. What could they possibly want with  _ Martin  _ of all people? He could imagine that a bunch of devious faeries might want something from Sasha, sharp and analytical and always in charge; or Jon, a faery himself; or charismatic Tim. But  _ Martin?  _ He wasn’t special. He was nobody. Why him?

He didn’t have an answer, and the silence stretched until Sasha once again intervened. “All right. File that under ‘questions to answer.’ Martin, are you safe at night?”

He thought of the iron poker he’d stolen from the kitchen fireplace and stashed under his pillow. It wasn’t particularly comfortable to sleep on, but it did make him feel a bit better protected. “I’m fine,” he said, trying to project more confidence than he actually felt.

“Okay then. Let’s figure out a plan.”

And that was what they did. Sasha fetched a notebook from her office and drew up a list of questions they had to answer, ranging from “How to save Danny” to “Who was the previous librarian?” Tim and Martin offered input. Jon was largely silent, gaze fixed on the floor. 

“Right,” said Sasha. “So I figure that the most logical thing to tackle first is to find out about the last librarian. If we can learn about them, that might tell us a lot about this library. What it is, why the worms wanted it preserved, what it means to Bouchard.” 

“What about Danny?” Tim said. 

“The more we understand about the library, the better chance we have of finding something here that can help him.”

“All right.” Tim sighed, as though not quite convinced, but didn’t argue.

Sasha assigned Martin and Tim the job of going to talk to Rosie. She seemed the best bet for information: she’d worked here for a long time and was rather friendlier to the librarians than the majority of the other castle staff, who tended to politely but consistently keep their distance. 

“Do you reckon they all know something we don’t about this job?” Tim asked as they climbed the stairs. Martin had left his crutches behind and was doing well, though taking it slow. 

“Could be.” 

“So many damn secrets in this place.”

“I can’t argue with that.” At least Tim seemed to have calmed down and put his anger aside for now, enough to have a normal conversation with Martin. 

They reached the first-floor landing and headed for the kitchens in search of Rosie. She wasn’t there, but the kitchen workers directed the librarians to the great hall, on the ground floor. They found her there in the midst of what at Castle Magnus passed for a crowd of staff members. She was busy overseeing the transformation of the room: drapes being removed from the long tables, maids and valets dusting in the corners, high windows being opened with workers stood on precarious-looking ladders. Tim and Martin had to duck around a pair of footmen hauling chairs in. The hall was completely impractical, Martin thought: it could easily seat three or four times the number of people currently living in the castle. 

Tim gave an appreciative whistle at all the commotion. “Hello Rosie. Big event coming up?”

“Hello, Mr. Stoker.” She gave Tim a genuine smile. That was Tim. He had a way with people. Martin stood back and let him do the talking. “Lord Bouchard gave the order to prepare for a celebration, so here we are.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“I am sure I don’t know.”

“Oh come on, Rosie,” said Tim conspiratorially. “You know everything around here.”

“I most certainly do not!” But she was grinning even wider.

“Not even an inkling?”

Rosie sighed. “If you insist, I heard a very important guest was coming to the castle soon. No, I don’t know who or when. But Lord Bouchard wants us to be prepared.”

“I knew you’d have the inside scoop.” 

“And just what brings you and Mr. Blackwood up from the library? I hope you all are well after all that unpleasantness?” She said  _ unpleasantness _ with a slight emphasis and a sharp look.

“Heard about that too, have you?” 

“The captain of the guard and the head librarian dragging burning branches through the castle does tend to attract some notice. But I’m sure it’s all been dealt with.”

“Actually, Rosie, on that subject --”

“No need to discuss such upsetting things.” 

This time Tim got the message. “Of course not,” he said evenly.

“Of course.” Rosie’s grin had faltered. She had seemed truly happy at first, but now there was a strain to it, like she was putting it on. Tim held silent for a moment, as if unsure how to proceed. Martin decided to jump in.

“We don’t want to talk about anything too  _ unpleasant,  _ Rosie,” he said. “We just wanted to ask you if you might have some information that’d help us do our jobs. You know, Lord Bouchard wants that library organized, and we were hoping you could tell us something to speed it up. Make it more efficient.”

For the first time in the conversation, Rosie looked straight at Martin. Her smile was calculating now. “To help carry out Lord Bouchard’s orders?”

“Naturally.” Martin smiled back.

“What did you need to know?”

“Is there anything you can tell us about the previous librarian? Their name, even?”

Rosie froze momentarily. Then, seeming to recover, she raised a hand and gestured about her. “It’s a bit noisy here by the door. Let’s go somewhere I can hear you properly.”

Most of the staff were clustered near the door. Rosie led them away into the still-darkened parts of the hall, where the workers had not yet gotten around to setting up candles and lanterns. At this end was the high table, where Lord Bouchard and his guest would no doubt sit, and behind it the unlit great fireplace. The table was still draped in cloth and covered in dust and cobwebs -- for a moment Martin had a flash of his dreams, spider silk spinning about him and encircling him. He shook his head. Not now. 

Rosie leaned against the stones next to the fireplace. “Quieter here,” she said. The sounds of the staff had faded to a low background. 

“What can you tell us?” Martin asked.

Rosie took a deep breath. “Her name was Gertrude Robinson. She came here before I did. Had a few assistants over the years. None stayed for long and a lot of the time it was just her alone down there. She collected a lot of the volumes that are down there now, used to travel a lot to get ahold of them. 

“Last year it came out that something was going on down there. I can’t say what it was exactly. Most people know better than to go spreading too many tales, if you catch my meaning. Lord Bouchard was furious. They say she tried to burn the place down. It didn’t work. Not long after that, he put out the call for a new librarian, and that’s when Ms. James turned up.”

“What happened to her?” Tim pressed.

“What did I just say about people knowing better than to spread tales?”

“You can’t tell us?”

Rosie crossed her arms and stared at him. 

“What else  _ can  _ you tell us?” Martin said.

“I know better than to stick my nose in some places. It only invites trouble. You might do well to learn that too. Though… perhaps with your latest colleague, trouble’s already come and found you.”

“If you mean Jon, he’s not causing trouble --”

“Martin.” Tim gave him a significant look. Martin changed tack.

“Is there anyone else who might be able to give us more information?”

“Perhaps ask your not-troubling new friend. Or else find some common sense somewhere.” She straightened up and dusted off her hands. “Now, you two, I really must be back to my duties.”

“Thank you,” said Martin. They left the great hall and went back downstairs to find Sasha and Jon.

“So, Jon, any idea what she’s talking about?” Tim’s tone was only marginally accusatory. 

“Not really.” Jon rested his head in his hands. That weight that had lifted from him after his talk with Georgie had settled back in. “I don’t really know that many fey.” He did that sharp exhalation that wasn’t quite a laugh and had no humor in it. “I suppose this means the entire castle knows about me.”

“You’re not that subtle,” Tim remarked.

“Yes, I  _ know,  _ thank you for your input Tim,” Jon snapped. “It seems like a little anonymity was too much to ask for.”

“Hey, you’re the one walking out the castle gates every evening in full view of everyone, not to mention never showing up for meals.”

“I don’t need the lecture.” Jon briefly looked up from his hands to glare at him. 

“Do you have any ideas at all?” inquired Sasha.

Jon grimaced into his fingers. “Maybe. I’m not sure.” He offered nothing further until the silence stretched and he noticed Sasha was still staring expectantly at him. “Like I said, I don’t know that many fey. There might be one or two. Most likely, however, is that they will be dead ends.”

Sasha clearly wanted to push him further, but apparently decided not to. “Okay. You look into that, then. In the meantime, is there anyone else in the castle we should ask?”

“Daisy and Basira?” Martin proposed.

“They’re under a lot of restrictions about what they can tell us,” said Tim. “And Basira was keen enough to kick Georgie and Melanie out of here earlier today.”

“Still worth asking. I can follow up with that.” Sasha was taking notes in pencil. “What else?”

“Danny.” 

“Yes, absolutely, Tim.” 

“And figuring out how to free Jon.” Martin certainly hadn’t forgotten about that. Sasha made a note.

“Nice to see we’re not getting too ambitious,” Jon muttered sarcastically.

“Hey. You’re part of this team, too.”

“One other slight detail,” Tim said. “Rosie seemed pretty convinced that looking into all this too deeply could be dangerous. We’ve nearly gotten ourselves killed already. How are we going to protect ourselves? Because  _ he _ says” -- with a nod at Jon -- “that the trick we pulled with burning branches and iron cookware isn’t going to work a second time.”

“It’s not going to. Which is why I originally wanted you all to stay out of this,” said Jon.

_ “They have my brother --”  _

“And clearly I wasn’t persuasive enough --”

“Hey.” Sasha cut both of them off. “We all realize this is dangerous. Anyone who wants to quit, can. Truly. I won’t blame you. In fact, I’ll write you a lovely letter of reference. You can go anywhere you like. Nobody  _ needs _ to risk themselves out here. But it seems like, while we’re here in the library, staying out of this business won’t keep us safe. It didn’t keep us safe from the worms and it probably didn’t keep the last librarian safe, either.”

Quitting. Martin had considered it, in the aftermath of his excursion to the hills, while talking to the water horse he hadn’t realized was Jon. It was true what he’d said at the time: he had nowhere else to go. What was waiting for him back in London anyway? 

And obviously Jon was trapped here. Even if he stopped working in the library, he’d still be working for Bouchard. 

The quiet lingered as it became obvious that no one was going to take up Sasha’s offer. She continued, “Tim, you’re right. We do need to be careful. If you haven’t already, I want everyone to carry something made of iron on them at all times.” She turned to Jon. “What other precautions should we take?”

“I don’t know. I could try asking Daisy.”

“Good.” She took down the note. “For the rest of us, any ideas on what our next steps should be?”

Martin said, “We should keep doing our actual jobs. If Bouchard gets wind that we’re not doing what he’s paying us for…”

“That would not end well,” Jon finished.

“All right, but that aside, what’s our next move? We should keep looking through the books, obviously, but I think it would be worthwhile to look at other angles at the same time.”

“Parish records?” Martin had taken a cursory look through the copies kept in the castle and had found these in marginally better organization than the rest of the collection. “Any clues from there? Births, deaths, that sort of thing.”

“The local papers might be useful,” suggested Jon. “Not extensive or well-written, in my recollection, but the back issues may be of some use.”

Sasha nodded. “I did take a quick look through our records earlier, but we should spend more time on it. Good thinking. Jon, do you mind taking the lead there? Perhaps along with Martin?”

“No, not at all.” Martin’s stomach did a little flip. So he’d continue to work closely with Jon. Sasha had been giving them more and more assignments together lately, probably because Martin obviously got along with Jon better than the other two librarians did. 

“All right,” Jon said. “Let’s get started on those newspapers.” Martin followed him into the southern stacks where filing boxes of backdated papers were kept. The library had a collection of everything from major publications from Edinburgh to the local newsletter circulated by the parish church. Each box was labeled by year -- a shocking level of organization by this library’s standards. Martin pulled out the most recent box, labeled with last year. 

“Are we still receiving these?” he wondered aloud.

“I’ve no idea.” Jon picked up a sheaf of copies of the local paper. 

“I’ve never seen them delivered.”

“Hmph.” Jon started flicking through issues. “Maybe Breekon and Hope bring them.”

Come to think of it, Martin hadn’t even seen a current newspaper in the time he’d been at Castle Magnus. For the last several weeks, he’d been utterly cut off from the wider world. He had few friends or family; no post had arrived for him, not that he’d been expecting it to, but for the first time it properly struck him how isolated they all were. If he stayed long, he’d be quite as ignorant of current events in the wider world as Jon was. London could have fallen into a crack in the earth and he wouldn’t have heard about it.

He fished out the most recent issue he could find, from the previous December. It was clearly printed and written by amateurs. The headline was something to do with a historic snowfall that had cut off the village for a week straight. Side stories involved tips on knitting and a writeup on the early days of lambing season. He put the story aside and continued his search. 

Martin’s eyes were starting to glaze over when Jon hissed his name. He sounded almost  _ excited.  _ Martin jumped at the sudden noise, but when he recovered, Jon passed him an issue of the newsletter from two years previously, on March 29th. 

_ LOCAL LOCH FIND ATTRACTS ACADEMIC ATTENTION _

_ Our treasure trove at Loch Súil has been noticed! The Hilltop Historical Society have had word that a scholar from the University will soon arrive in the village to examine the findings. Thus far, according to the Society, the boxes that washed ashore a fortnight ago on the eastern shore of the loch have contained ancient weaponry and armour. The Society, along with other local residents with an interest in our region’s history, have conducted the preliminary investigations. Mr. Herbert Knox, President of the Society, says that the find will have enormous academic value, and that he himself will be present to welcome the delegation from the University, which should be arriving any day. “This discovery will draw the wider world to Hilltop Village,” he said in a statement. _

And that was it. There was no author attribution, no elaboration. Jon was gazing fiercely at the paper in Martin’s hand.

“This was… this was it,” Martin whispered. 

“Yeah.” 

“It doesn’t make sense. How does a bunch of metal -- swords and all -- wash up on a beach? It’s too heavy for currents to push it out of the water.”

Jon met his eyes. “I suppose it doesn’t just wash up. Something puts it there to be found.”

“Do any of the previous issues say anything else about it?”

“Hmm.” Jon reached for the stack of papers he’d been sorting through. “It only comes out once per fortnight… here. March the 15th.” He held it up so he and Martin could read it simultaneously. 

_ HISTORICAL SOCIETY ANNOUNCES ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY _

_ Mr. Herbert Knox, President of the Hilltop Historical Society, has announced a major new find by Loch Súil. Among debris washed ashore after last week’s storm are a number of ancient swords in remarkably well-preserved condition. Mr. Knox credited Castle Magnus librarian Gertrude Robinson with bringing the find to his attention. “The Historical Society appreciates Ms. Robinson, and of course Lord Bouchard, for their assistance with this discovery.” Further study will be needed to determine the significance of the findings, but for now, if you see Mr. Knox at the Lion, consider buying him a round! _

For a moment, Martin could only sit there in shock, mouth open. Jon was wide-eyed and breathing quickly. His hand shook just a touch as he held up the paper.

“Well, that’s…” he started to say, then quickly lost steam. Martin turned to him and they stared at one another, lost for words, until at last Martin succeeded in bringing his thoughts into some semblance of order.

“Her name was Gertrude Robinson. Do you recognize it at all?”

“No. But she was the first to find it, or at least the first to report it. And then Michael… I’m not sure I believe in coincidences anymore.”

“Me neither.” Sasha and Tim were nowhere nearby, and for a moment, Martin thought about going to find them at once. But Jon said, “Let’s see what else we can find,” and they both went back to digging through the newsletters.

The papers themselves were largely boring in this town where the most talked-about incident of the year involved old Mr. Anderson’s pigs getting loose during the village fete. It would have been a dull task if not for Jon’s constant presence right by his shoulder as they picked through the box. It wasn’t like having a normal person there -- he gave off no body heat, none of that subtle warmth that human beings radiated -- but Martin didn’t mind, because it was Jon. When their hands brushed Martin silently savored the electric thrill that ran through him. But he didn’t allow himself to become too distracted: this was important work, and it mattered to Jon.

Sadly, he was starting to lose hope. None of the other issues they skimmed through mentioned a word about Gertrude Robinson, or Castle Magnus, for that matter. He might have thought that a local member of the nobility like Bouchard would have cropped up from time to time, but as the afternoon wore on, he began to lose hope. Obviously there were many more boxes to look through, but it became clear that the newsletters would provide them with no further easy answers. Eventually, he went and found Tim and Sasha, giving them Gertrude’s name in case they ran across it as they searched the parish records. They did not.

Still, as Sasha said at the end-of-day meeting, it had been a productive day. They had a name and a few leads, several of which were left up to Jon to chase down. Dinner was starting, though, and they were all tired. Tim and Sasha made for the stairs, and Jon was turning to follow in their wake, to go back out into the cold and dark.

Martin didn’t even register that he was speaking until the words were already coming out and it was too late to take them back. “Jon, want to come to dinner with us?”

It came out high pitched and awkward after he realized halfway through that this was a monumentally stupid thing to ask. Jon had never shown the slightest inclination to join them for meals; in fact, he always hung back in the library over lunch. Just that day he’d been upset that the rest of the staff probably knew he wasn’t human. 

“I don’t really eat normal food,” said Jon after a mortifying moment of silence. Martin could only stare at the floor, but he could still tell that Tim and Sasha had heard and were stood still in the corridor, listening. 

Martin immediately backtracked. “It’s all right, you don’t have to --”

“No, I -- I’ll come.”

Martin was in shock. He finally looked at Jon’s face, and Jon looked to be surprised as well. But he wasn’t running for the exit. Even Tim and Sasha looked taken aback.

“Well,” said Sasha, “that’s great. Come on, Jon.” And Jon followed them up the stairs, lingering at the back with Martin and matching his slow, deliberate pace. 

In the staff dining room, Martin pointed out their usual table to Jon, who went straight for it without joining the queue for food. He sat down and began inspecting the plain wood of the surface as though it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. Martin, just behind Tim and Sasha in the queue, surreptitiously examined the room to see if anyone was staring at Jon, and perhaps to glare them into looking away if necessary. Nobody was. In fact, he almost thought that the rest of the staff were deliberately ignoring Jon, consciously gazing elsewhere.

Martin picked up a bowl and spooned himself a helping of beans. He glanced back at Jon, who had found a fork and was idly fidgeting with it. Martin hurriedly grabbed a piece of toast and a pad of butter, then went to sit with the others. 

Tim and Sasha had left one chair open: the one next to Jon, of course. Martin took it and sat down. “Are you sure we can’t get you anything?” he asked Jon, a bit pathetically.

“No. My diet’s a bit, er, idiosyncratic.” Then, “But thank you, Martin.”

“Okay.” Once again he found himself at a loss for words, but he’d invited Jon here, and it was his duty to soldier on. “We’ll probably have to go to the village soon to find Georgie and Melanie before -- I mean, in case they leave. Do you want to come?”

“I might need permission to leave the castle area,” said Jon. “But then again, I’ve not tried. Maybe it’d work.”

“Well, if you want to, I’m sure Georgie would want to see you.” Martin’s jealousy aside, a talk with his old friend had obviously done Jon some good.”

“Hmph. Maybe.” Jon picked at the tines of the fork. 

“Just riveting dinner company, aren’t you?” said Tim.

“Tim!” Sasha swatted him on the arm.

“What? All right, fine, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” said Jon. Martin disagreed, and secretly cheered Sasha for stepping in.

“Back on track, I agree with you, Martin,” Sasha continued. “I don’t think we can assume Georgie and Melanie will be allowed back in the castle. We need to go visit them in town. It’d be nice to get out of the castle for a while anyway. And yes, Jon, if you’d like to come, you’re more than welcome.”

“Thank you,” Jon said.

Normally, when it was just the three original librarians, Tim carried the conversation. He had a knack for making it feel natural. Now, though, he didn’t seem inclined to talk. Jon was clearly uncomfortable and retreating into silence, and neither Sasha nor Martin knew quite what to say. So the rest of the meal passed largely in uncomfortable silence. Martin found himself rushing through his dinner and he figured Sasha and Tim were as well. He tried a few more times to start a new topic of conversation, but it always spluttered and died within a minute or two.

As soon as Sasha, the last to finish, put down her fork, all of them stood up with embarrassingly obvious haste. 

“Thank you for coming to dinner,” said Martin, foolishly. He almost added,  _ you’re welcome back anytime,  _ but managed to stop himself before he humiliated himself even further. 

“Sure,” said Jon. The dark circles under his eyes looked deeper than ever. “I should go.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Martin followed him down the stairs, internally cursing himself for starting this whole idiotic endeavor, until they reached the ground floor. Tim and Sasha had headed the other way, and it was just him and Jon now in the dim candlelight near the door to the courtyard.

“I, um. Well.” Why did Martin have to be so flustered?

When it was clear he wasn’t going to finish the thought, Jon said, “All right, then. Good night, Martin.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” And he turned and walked through the door and was once again gone into the fading light of evening.

Martin let out a frustrated sigh. He went back downstairs. Maybe some poetry would help him clear his head and finally, help him sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, it's been long enough, but here's the next chapter at last! Now with 200% more Gertrude!


	14. Wild Hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Plot for all you lovely (patient) folks! Jon, as usual, gets in way over his head and ends up in Trouble.
> 
> CW: isolation, loneliness, the hunt, corpses, decay, body horror, mentions of needles, kidnapping, and murder

Jon stopped by the gatehouse on his way out to see if Daisy was about. But when he arrived, he only found Basira, working on what looked to be an accounts book. 

“Is Daisy in? I have some questions I’d like to ask her.”

Basira glanced up from her ledger momentarily. “She’s out tonight.”

“You mean…”

“I mean she’s  _ out.” _

Ah. Presumably she was hunting or patrolling the borders or running an errand for Bouchard. He doubted Basira would have the answers he sought; for all her focus and competence, she was human. There were some things she was simply unlikely to know. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Day after tomorrow at the earliest.” She put the pen down. “I’ve got to close the gates soon. You should go.”

He did. Like every evening before, he let his glamour fall as he walked the path down to the loch. Unlike other evenings, he didn’t dive into the waters. He had business to attend to.

The others were counting on him, not only to find a way to protect Martin from his dreams, but to guard the castle against future attacks and see if any of the local fey could tell him anything about Gertrude Robinson: why she’d tried to burn down the library, what she’d found out by Loch Súil, how she had attracted Bouchard’s displeasure. He desperately needed information. 

The trouble was, he truly  _ didn’t  _ know that many fey. Daisy was the only one he felt remotely comfortable approaching with this request, but she was likely prohibited from telling him very much, assuming she even knew herself. His next thought, uncomfortably, was of Michael. He had no idea how to call upon him, however, and didn’t think he’d be getting straight answers from him, either. Nor did he relish the thought of letting Michael continue to taunt him. Surely he knew something about Gertrude, at least: he’d taken Jon to the loch himself, and had hinted at being involved in a larger plan. Whether he’d be willing or able to tell Jon was another matter entirely. Not to mention that he was also known as the Deceiver.

That left the few faeries he’d met in the woods and hills, none of whom he’d ever spoken to outside of brief, wary greetings, born from politeness and a desire to avoid direct conflict. There were the singers in the hills, always waiting behind their doors or riding on waves of fog; the hobs and sprites of streams and bogs; the hungry things that haunted some of the woods. None of them were the talkative type. He had no plan. And yet he couldn’t just sink back into his waters, not now. 

He decided to try the singers first. He knew where to find them, if not precisely what they were, but he’d forced them to back off once before. At the very least, he could try to find out why they called to Martin. He left the beach at a canter.

Jon took a more direct path into the hills north of the loch than he had when following Martin. He had to scramble on the slopes, both muddy and rocky beneath the overgrown grass, but by the time twilight was deepening into full night, he was approaching the door in the hillside where Martin had nearly been taken. The night was overcast but without rain or low fog, yet a heavy mist clung to the earth on the narrow path leading to the door. The noises of small animals faded and even the sound of the breeze through the grasses was muffled. The mist swirled in eddies and clung to his legs. It was cold and grasping and hungry, clearly not entirely natural. But he had to do this. No one else could, and the other librarians needed him, and this might be his best hope to keep them all out of danger. So he kept moving, at a slower pace but still steady, as the boulder that hid the door emerged from the mists.

Before, he’d taken the singers by surprise. He’d been able to hear their song from a distance, but its focus had all been on Martin. His headlong charge had disrupted their rhythm and broken their song. He was expecting something similar tonight, a tune he could fight. But there was nothing, no sound, no singing, only the fog lapping at his feet.

He gathered himself. He’d come this far. He needed answers. “Show yourselves.”

“That’s a bit rude, wouldn’t you say?”

The voice came from everywhere at once, whisper-soft, gentle. Jon spun, sending waves of mist rippling upward. He strained with every sense, every bit of his wide-set sight and precise hearing, and he found nothing.

“I don’t come down to your loch and make demands. It’s simple courtesy.” There was no hint of song, only that quiet voice.

“Who are you?”

“I think that as the guest here,  _ you  _ ought to go first.”

“I’m not playing that game. Tell me who you are.”

“I don’t mean to be dismissive, but what, exactly, do you plan to do if I refuse?”

Jon advanced on the boulder. This close, he saw that it was sealed tight against the hillside, without so much as a crack to lead him into the inner darkness.  _ Faërie _ . This could only be a doorway to the hidden kingdom, only now it was shut against him. He stalked around to the far side of the stone, just to be sure, but there was only smooth rock and damp earth. 

And he still couldn’t see whoever was talking to him. Unless, of course… He kicked back sharply at the fog with a heel and saw it scatter into wisps, then congeal more thickly than ever around him. It had moved against the wind.

He had thought the mists and the singers one entity. Perhaps that had been yet another stupid assumption. 

“You see? The door’s closed tonight,” said the voice from the fog. “So if you’re quite finished, I really am terribly busy.”

Jon changed tack. “What do you know about Gertrude Robinson and the Magnus library?”

“My, that’s a big question. Not one I’m really equipped to answer, I must say.”

“What do you want with Martin?” Jon remembered how greedily the mists had reached for him that day he’d gone for an ill-fated hike in the hills.

“I really must be getting on with --”

“What are you --”

“Now, honestly,” said the voice, and suddenly the fog began to  _ press  _ on his skin, to crawl up his legs. “I have been asking you very politely.” There was no song to the fog; in fact, it was the opposite of a song, a buzzing, hissing silence that clutched at him, and the notes of his own music grew faint. He started to back up, but the fog pushed back, dragging at his limbs. 

“I think I’ve been very patient.” The fog crept higher and curled itself tighter around him. Jon kicked back behind him in earnest now, but the mist instantly dragged him back to the ground. He tried to run. He’d lost his sense of direction entirely, so he simply plunged forward; any way out was better than staying here. But the air went tight around him and pushed back, almost as though he were swimming upriver. It slowed him, and he strained but only made it a stride or two before he could move no more. He was trapped. 

A wave of fog rose up and then poured over his head, and as he breathed it choked him and the buzzing quiet grew louder and louder. The ground felt strangely soft, as if it, too, was mingling and mixing with the fog. It closed above him and sealed off the sky and filled his lungs. He was back on that day Michael had left him to be killed on the beach: deep underwater, blind, disorientated, bleeding out into darkness. He thrashed and fought and sank and sank and sank. 

“Easy now,” the voice said brightly. “That’s more like it.”

He’d been so stupid. Walked right into the middle of something far bigger and more dangerous than he could handle. Again. 

And the fog stretched on forever, and there was no earth or sky or water, no direction, no sunlight to swim to, no moon or stars to guide the way, no singing save for the gentle whisper of the mists, no one to search for or be found by, and there was nothing to do at all but give in and, slowly, bit by bit, let himself be eroded and fade away.

_ What do you  _ want,  _ Jon? _

_ I would have done the same to any mortal idiot. _

_ You’ve got people here who care about you. _

_ Oh, Jon. I’m so sorry. _

_ Everything that’s happened, and you still care. _

He tried, but he couldn’t hold onto them. Their faces and voices slipped from his grasp. They couldn’t reach him here…

A sound that wasn’t silence. A howl. Hoofbeats. A blast of wind shredded through the fog and he could see the sky again. The ground solidified under his feet. Jon was standing, legs shaking, coated in dew. It was night, and the only clouds were natural ones high above. Indeed, the wind shredded the last of the clouds overhead and revealed a cold half-moon and icy stars. 

And he was not alone.

There was a Hunter on the slope above the door. They held a spear and rode on a black horse -- not a kelpie, but no mortal steed, either -- and a cloak and cowl obscured their features. Their outline blurred and shifted and seemed to devour the faint light, more like a hole in the world than the shape of a living thing. Encircling them was a ring of black-coated hounds, which, like horse and rider, stared at Jon with pale, glowing eyes. 

The Hunt had found him. He’d heard stories, caught glimpses in the distance, and had never possessed the slightest desire to see them up close. They’d driven off the fog, but Jon couldn’t imagine they’d truly intended to rescue him. Good deeds weren’t their way. 

The rider raised their spear. Two hounds out of the circle stepped apart, leaving a path open down the hill. The rest remained in place, but shifted their weight, low and forward, predators stalking their prey. They bared their teeth. The scant moonlight flashed off their teeth.

Jon ran.

He bolted down the hill in a reckless sprint. Behind him the rider waved their spear and the dogs converged in a snarling mass. They began to howl. It wasn’t the howls of tame dogs or even of wolves; it was higher and sharper and  _ hungrier.  _ A hunting horn sounded above the fray, a rising note that wove among the dogs’ cries and echoed from every stone and blade of grass. And then, the sound of hoofbeats behind him and the softer but no less deadly chorus of the hounds’ footfalls, coming down the path, taking up the chase. 

Jon was racing all-out now. He jumped logs and ditches and stones rather than go around or break his stride. He couldn’t climb the steep hills to either side; that would only slow him down. He had to reach the plains near the castle and then his loch. Underwater, he’d be safe. 

Behind him the Hunt surged down the path. He’d gotten the jump on them, or more accurately, they’d allowed him a head start. As the trail twisted in the narrow gully between the hills, sometimes they were obscured, but always the next straightaway revealed them and showed that they were steadily closing the gap. The hunting horn blew, and now Jon could see more riders in the pack, shadowy figures with spears and shields, urging the hounds onward. The dogs’ baying filled the night. A wind whipped through the canyon and into his face, pushing him back, carrying his scent back to his pursuers. The hills pressed in close to the path. He had no hope of losing them. He could only try to outrun them. 

His flight became increasingly desperate. He was no longer properly looking where he was going, unable to stop himself from focusing on the hunters. He misjudged the distance when leaping over a particularly large boulder and nearly fell on landing. Jon caught himself just in time, but it cost him a few precious instants.  _ Don’t fall don’t fall don’t fall.  _ A branch snapped and grazed his flank. Even he could smell the blood on the air. The Hunters let out a cry of triumph and surged forward with redoubled speed. 

For the first time since he’d become a kelpie, Jon felt his heart racing. His breath started to come harsh and ragged. His throat burned and his ribs ached. The Hunters, for their part, didn’t seem the least bit tired. The fear of their flagging prey drove them onward. Jon couldn’t let himself falter. He knew this part of the path well. He was close to the castle, close to the plain, close to his loch and safety. But they were still coming, closer and closer, now only a stone’s throw away to the snapping teeth, the echoing howls, the joyful viciousness in those shining eyes. They had scented his blood and they wanted it for their own.

One final hairpin turn in the path, a steep downbank that he simply took at a jump, and he was out on the plain, nearly in the shadow of the castle. But if he’d hoped that the mere sight of Castle Magnus would discourage the Hunters, he was instantly disappointed. They came pouring out of the hills, now a dozen riders and innumerable hounds, and their howls and bugles cracked at the foundations of the night. The earth shivered under him. The air grew tight, save for the wind, which drove needles into his veins and froze his breath. Every shadow birthed a new Hunter. The world went narrow and time broke into fragments, punctuated by teeth and spearpoints and frantic heartbeats. He fixed himself on the loch and he, prey, made his final bid for escape.

The hounds were all around him now. Their fangs snapped at his legs. A rider thrust a spear at his flank and he only narrowly swerved out of the way. He had no thought of fighting back. His feet fell on grass, then on sand and stone, and then, at last, just as the first bite tore into his left hind leg, he hit the water.

The dropoff to deep water was close to shore here, a mere two or three strides, but even so, he knew the instant he entered the loch that he was safe. The world expanded and the wind calmed and the earth steadied. Still, he dove deep and didn’t stop swimming until he was far from shore and from the surface. He could no longer hear the horns or hounds. Just the currents and the slow song of gentle wavelets on the shore. 

They’d been black dogs, road predators. They’d come for him. And Daisy had been  _ out _ tonight. 

“Jon?”

He flinched. The night had been long; he’d only just manage to drift off into his faerie approximation of sleep, and before he truly registered the speaker’s voice, he was already gathering himself to fight or flee.

“Jon, if you can hear me, we’re going to town today to see Georgie and Melanie.”

It was Martin. 

Jon quieted the currents that had begun to stir in the depths of the loch when he’d been startled. He steadied his breath. No horns or howls. Sunlight filtered down from above. In fact, he’d lost track of time: it was full morning now, well past his usual wake-up time at dawn. They never hunted by day. He let the currents speed his way to shore. 

Martin was stood alone on the beach. He shouldn’t keep trekking down here; that ankle of his still needed to heal, but here he was anyway. He waved as Jon surfaced and drew his glamour up and into place. 

“Hello Martin,” said Jon, and got a smile in response. Somehow it made him feel a bit lighter.

“Morning,” Martin replied. “You… I mean, that always looks so  _ cool.” _

“Really?” Jon had never given much thought to what it looked like as he worked with glamour, but it surprised him still that Martin apparently didn’t find it disturbing. He’d assumed that most people would be put off, at least a little. Perhaps he shouldn’t be shocked, Martin definitely not being  _ most people.  _

“Er, yeah, actually.” Martin looked a bit uncomfortable, but he said it anyway, and seemed to mean it.

“Oh. Well.” Do you say  _ thank you?  _ Definitely not. That would be terribly awkward, right? What  _ do  _ you say when someone compliments you, a carnivorous fey water horse, on how it looks when you weave your human disguise?

Martin rescued him once again. “Do you want to come with?  _ Can _ you?”

Jon looked up the bluff and saw, just outside the castle gates, a pony and cart. Doubtless Tim and Sasha and probably Basira would be there already. He wasn’t sure of the geographical limits of his binding to Bouchard and the loch, but today seemed like the right day to find out. He didn’t want Bouchard angry with him, but there was something in him that really wanted to be back in something resembling civilization, even if only for a short while. And he’d be with the librarians and Martin.

“I’ll give it a go,” he told Martin, and got rewarded with another grin. He found himself matching it. Together, they hiked up the bluffs and to the road. Jon matched Martin’s slow pace and was pleased to see that Martin was walking well, no trace of a limp. 

Thinking of Martin’s injury forcibly reminded Jon of his own failed expedition into the hills. He’d nearly been killed, or worse, twice. He’d gone up against forces he didn’t understand and couldn’t fight and he’d failed to learn anything that could help the other librarians. He’d told them he’d talk to the local fey, but all he’d managed to do was avoid being destroyed by the slimmest of margins. 

When they reached the road, Jon struggled to keep from staring at Basira. Was Daisy a part of the Hunt, and if so, did Basira know about it? Those two were close, partners in potentially several senses of the word, and he could never really get a handle on what Basira knew about faeries, anyway. He was tempted to demand answers, but after all, his recent attempts at doing just that had backfired disastrously. He contented himself with a scowl.

“He’s coming with us?” Basira raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” said Martin, almost defiantly. 

Basira shrugged. “Not my problem. Get in, then.”

She hadn’t brought out the fine coach or even the worn old chaise Jon had often seen her use to ferry people to town and back. Instead, she’d hitched the pony to a plain flat-bedded wagon, half of which was full of empty wooden boxes. 

“Supply run?” Jon asked.

“It was the only way she’d agree to take us,” Sasha told him. She was sat cross-legged in the wagon bed, leaning against the sideboards, and looking quite pleased. “Got some errands to run, haven’t you?”

“I usually do.” Basira waited for Jon and Martin to get settled in the back before clucking to the pony and flicking the reins. The wagon started its rattling journey down the greenway.

“Hey Jon,” said Tim after a moment, “if the pony gets tired, will you take over?”

Jon gave him his most withering glare. 

He did not, in the end, pass out or become ill or feel compelled to return to his loch. Instead, three-quarters of an hour later, the wagon entered the valley where Hilltop Village lay, and Jon had his first view of a town in years. He’d wondered how it would feel to see houses and buildings and people that didn’t belong to Castle Magnus. As it turned out, it was something of a letdown. Hilltop Village was just as small and gray and dull as he remembered. 

The others, though, seemed excited. Sasha had a notebook out and a pencil tucked into her long hair where she kept it pinned up: she was planning to drop by the village hall to see if they had any more records there that could help. Tim, too, was ready to interview townspeople about Gertrude Robinson and Castle Magnus. Jon suspected it would be a waste of time. He doubted the locals would agree to talk to any of them about it. But Sasha had insisted, and he figured he had no choice but to let them chase the wind for a while. 

He and Martin, meanwhile, were released to spend time with Georgie and Melanie. The four of them would stop by the inn together, then Tim and Sasha would set out on their errands. Basira had given them a strict two-hour time limit. They had to return before then or risk spending the night in the village. Or, at least, the three human librarians did. Jon could get himself back home quite efficiently if needed. 

The inn was still small and drab and boring. It reeked of alcohol and smoke. The low ceiling pressed in close over Jon’s head and made him twitchy. He kept his head low and avoided the stares of the barman and the few patrons. He doubted they’d remember him; it’d been two years, after all, since he’d stayed here prior to his disappearance. Still, he’d recreated his old appearance with glamour, so theoretically, he might be recognized. That could only lead to trouble.

Georgie and Melanie had taken over a table in one corner. They waved to the four librarians, and soon enough, they were all crowded around the table. None of them ordered anything, earning them a hard stare from the barman. 

“What are your plans?” asked Tim. “Headed back to civilization?”

“Yeah,” said Melanie bluntly. “This stuff… it’s not something we can get wrapped up in.”

“Makes sense,” Tim said. 

“Thank you for your help,” Georgie put in. 

“And yours,” Sasha responded. “We’ve just turned up some really interesting leads, though. We found the name of the old librarian, and there’s something going on with Loch Súil near town, and… are you sure you want to walk away from all this?”

“We’ve made our decision.” Melanie’s tone was firm. 

Sasha shrugged, then smiled. “Can’t blame me for pitching it to you. We could really use some people with your skillset here.”

Melanie said, “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

Jon let out a breath. They were leaving. He’d miss Georgie, but this way they’d be out of danger. He couldn’t keep the other three librarians out of it, not anymore, but at least Georgie and Melanie were doing the sensible thing. “We will,” he told Melanie.

Before long, Tim and Sasha left with promises to say their goodbyes before going back to the Castle. That left Jon and Martin with Georgie and Melanie, and when Georgie suggested moving the conversation to the small field out back of the inn, Martin and a grateful Jon accepted. Here they were safer from prying eyes and ears and away from that oppressive room. 

They talked about ordinary things. How Georgie had gone job-hunting after university and ended up working for  _ Doyle’s,  _ where she’d met Melanie, and how they’d become partners in several senses of the word. The details of some of the strange and sometimes silly cases they’d been asked to investigate: ghosts in hospitals, spirits in wells, a house whose owner swore up and down had haunted plumbing. In their work, they’d never encountered anything incontrovertibly supernatural until now. 

Except. Georgie finished describing their last case and stole a glance at Melanie, who laid a hand on her shoulder. “Before we go, Jon, there’s something else I’d like to tell you.”

Martin, apparently anticipating a sensitive topic, asked, “Should I…?” and gestured back to the pub.

“No,” Georgie replied. “It’s okay.” And then she told the story.

“My first year at uni, before I met you, Jon, I ran into something. It was the reason I decided to work for  _ Doyle’s.  _ Most of the stories I ended up chasing there were fake, people trying to run scams or else just genuinely confused, wanting to believe something that wasn’t real. But I knew that at least some of those stories had to be real because of what I saw.

“I was staying in a flat at the end of Henley Close, right next to the old chapel. They never held services there anymore and had mostly abandoned the old churchyard, just let it go to ruin. All those old graves, falling over, cracked, covered in moss. Obviously, the students living around there liked to climb the wall and mess around in the yard. There was nobody guarding the place and it was pretty much overgrown, so from the street, no one could see what you were doing in there.

“I had a friend at the time, Alex. She was studying medicine. She loved that old place. She wouldn’t do anything ridiculous in there. I think she just liked the quiet of it, the wild grasses and bushes. Someplace outdoors where no one would bother you. I used to go in there with her from time to time when we needed a break.

Anyway, we were in there one evening after lecture and we both thought we had the place to ourselves. It was just about sunset. We were just talking -- I don’t even recall what about -- when we both heard this noise from the other side of the churchyard. With all the overgrowth we couldn’t see what it was, but it sounded like a moan, like someone in pain. 

“We both called out, but just heard that same noise again. We looked at each other and decided we’d better go see if there was someone who needed help. After all, Alex was studying medicine; she wasn’t a doctor yet, but she might be able to do something at least. We got up and followed the sound.

“Somehow in all the brush, I lost sight of her. I kept looking for whoever had been moaning, thinking that I’d find her there, but when I made it to the other side of the churchyard, there was no one there. I called out for Alex but she didn’t answer. By then I was starting to get worried, and I went rushing around the yard, yelling her name. I couldn’t find her anywhere. The yard wasn’t that big, even though it was a bit of a jungle. She shouldn’t have been able to get lost or lose track of my voice.

“I looked around for a long time, but once it got properly dark, I had to leave. I went to her flat, to her friends’ flats, the pub down the street, the local surgery -- anywhere I could think that she might be. I couldn’t find her anywhere. 

“The next day she wasn’t at any of her lectures. I know. I checked. I asked all her classmates and professors, but none of them had seen her. They told me not to worry, that she’d certainly be back soon, that this wasn’t the first time a student had seemed to vanish for a couple of days. 

“Maybe she’d fallen in a sinkhole? Maybe whoever had been moaning had kidnapped her? I knocked on all the neighbors’ doors, checked at the constable’s office. Nothing. 

“I scoured every inch of the churchyard that day. At dusk, I was still there and close to, well, despair. And that’s when I heard the moaning again.

“I was scared. This might be the person who’d kidnapped Alex, come back again. I’d thought to bring a carving knife with me from my apartment, though, and hoped that would do the trick. So I followed the sound again because I knew I couldn’t just leave, not if there was a chance to help her.

“I ended up by the ruin of the little old chapel, where the graves were most concentrated. I came through the last thicket of brambles and found myself face to face with the rotting wooden door of the place. The stones were covered in lichen. I grabbed the carving knife and demanded ‘Who’s there?’

“I pushed on the chapel door, but it didn’t budge, even though the wood was decaying. And then I heard the sound again, and I turned back to face the graves, and there she was. Alex was back. 

“Only I could see at once that she wasn’t right. She was… blank. That’s the only way I can think to describe her. Her face was all slack. There was no life in it at all. Her eyes had gone glassy. She didn’t seem to be seeing me. I ran to her, cried out her name, but before I reached her, I stopped dead in my tracks. That was because I started to see the others.

“They didn’t look like ghosts. I mean, they weren’t transparent or anything. They didn’t just blink into visibility. It was more like they’d always been there and the closer I got, the more I could see them, even though the sun was setting. They were blank, like Alex, but somehow  _ older.  _ Some of them, you could tell that something had started eating at them; they had holes around their edges. Their eyes were glazed over. And they were dead. I  _ knew  _ they were. Nothing could look like that and be alive.

“I’d stopped running by this time. I said ‘Alex?’ She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached forward and grabbed my hand. Her skin was papery and cold.

“She pulled me in. I didn’t even try to resist. My entire arm slowly went numb, starting from where she touched me. She leaned close and whispered to me,  _ The moment you die will feel exactly the same as this one.  _

“Then she let me go. I ran. There was nothing else to do. Alex was gone. I couldn’t save her. There was nothing of her left to save.

“I had to take a year off after that. There was a missing persons investigation that found nothing and was called off eventually. When I came back, I met you.

“Nothing’s really scared me since that night. Maybe when you get too close to something like that, it’s like cauterizing a wound, stops it from bleeding. I don’t know.”

She met Jon’s eyes. “Figured I ought to tell you after everything that happened. It’s just… I’ve never told anyone that, not even Melanie. It took me some time to work myself up to it.” By this time, Melanie held Georgie close. 

“I’m so sorry,” said Jon. 

“Now you know.” Georgie leaned into Melanie’s embrace. “You told me yours. I told you mine.”

Jon’s relief at getting Georgie and Melanie back to London was suddenly multiplied. It had to be less dangerous than continuing to investigate up here. Still, something supernatural had found Georgie in a city, in Oxford. There were no guarantees of safety.

“Stay out of graveyards,” he told her. “Keep iron with you.”

“I will,” Georgie said. 

At that moment, Tim emerged from the back door of the inn. “Owner said I’d find you four back here. Enjoying your chat?” Then he noticed their body language: Melanie wrapped protectively around Georgie, Martin and Jon looking apprehensive. “What happened?”

Jon looked to Georgie. She mustered a smile for Tim. “Just tying up some loose ends. Everything’s all right.”

Tim didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t press it, either. “All right. Sounds like you were more productive than I was. I swear, dodging questions is a local sport.” He leaned against the wall of the inn. “Seen Sasha yet?”

“Not yet,” said Martin. 

“Did I hear my name?”

She came around the side of the building with her notebook and pencil in one hand and a stack of loose papers in the other. A gust of wind came with her and she had to take a moment to juggle her book and papers and pencil while she pushed a few loose strands of her short hair away from her eyes. 

“Perfect timing,” Tim said. “The boss is here. Find anything?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Sasha, and she grinned. 

Georgie and Melanie were scheduled to take the morning’s post carriage south. Jon had always been useless at goodbyes and today was no exception. He gave Georgie one last hug outside the inn. “Take care,” he whispered to her.

“You too,” she whispered back. “Write to me. I mean it.”

And then he had to climb back into the wagon. He sat next to Martin and watched the inn and the rest of Hilltop Village fade away once again. The road turned around a hill and they were gone. Back to Castle Magnus and the loch and the world to which Jon belonged. He let himself lean into Martin just a little. He was tired and Martin was warm and soft. Tim chatted with Basira, who let herself be drawn into an actual conversation for once. 

And Sasha hummed a jaunty tune. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything's fine. It's all perfectly normal and natural. Don't look at me like that!


End file.
